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THE LAST 
INCARNATION 



BOSTON: THE GORHAM PRESS 

TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED 


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Copyright 1914, by Charles H. Kohlmail 


All Rights Reserved 


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The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 




CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prologue 9 

FIRST .LEGEND 

The Little Child Who Seeks His Father and 
His Mother 17 

SECOND LEGEND 

The Same Child and the Same Priests, After 
an Interval of Eighteen Hundred and 
Forty Years . 25 

THIRD LEGEND 

The Martyrdom of the Innocents ... 35 

FOURTH LEGEND 

The Apprentice Carpenter 43 

FIFTH LEGEND 

The Children of Solomon 51 

SIXTH LEGEND 

The Daughters of Magdalen 61 

SEVENTH LEGEND 

The Conspirators 69 

EIGHTH LEGEND 

The New Adulterous Woman 77 

NINTH LEGEND 

The House of the Insane 85 


CONTENTS 


TENTH LEGEND page 

The Heirs of Pilate 95 

ELEVENTH LEGEND 

The Reprobates and the Elect . . . .103 

TWELFTH LEGEND 

The Sermon on the Plain 109 

THIRTEENTH LEGEND 

The Living and the Dead 12 1 

FOURTEENTH LEGEND 

The Discouraged Philosopher 127 

FIFTEENTH LEGEND 

The Dying Poet 137 

SIXTEENTH LEGEND 

The New Nicodemus 145 

SEVENTEENTH LEGEND 

The Tomb of Saint John 15 1 

EIGHTEENTH LEGEND 

The Farewell to Calvary 155 

NINETEENTH LEGEND 

The Last Vision 163 


Epilogue 


169 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD AMERICAN 
EDITION 

For the third time an edition of The Last In- 
carnation is presented in the English language. 
As will be noted by the title of the Second Legend, 
the work was written in 1840. The first English 
edition must have been printed in the same dec- 
ade, for it fell into the hands of the young lad 
who preserved it for posterity early in the fifties. 
The second edition was issued by the writer in 
1878. It contained in lieu of preface the fol- 
lowing “ Explanatory ” note : 

A quarter of a century ago, in an old lumber room of an 
Illinois farm house, covered with waste paper, old books, shoes, 
and the manifold odds and ends of an untidy homestead pre- 
sided over by intemperance and unthrift, the following beauti- 
ful legends were found and dragged to the light of day, to 
feed the ravenous mental hunger of an eager, inquisitive boy. 
The volume is a translation from the French of A. Constant, 
of Geneva. This only copy — yellow with age and covered 
with mold, the corners eaten away by mice and the binding 
gone — gave little promise of merit in its contents to repay pe- 
rusal; but the finder was so delighted on a first, second and 
third reading that he sought vainly for another copy in the cit- 
ies of New Orleans, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. 


PREFACE 


The Last Incarnation is believed to be out of print, and from 
this unique copy a workingman has set the type and reprinted 
the work during his leisure moments, solely to benefit his broth- 
ers of the working class, and to present the beautiful truths of 
true Christianity in a form that will attract a large number 
of good people who could in no other way be induced to learn 
their nature. 

Of the author of The Last Incarnation little is 
known by the writer. In 1879, shortly after the 
printing of the second English edition, I received 
a letter from an elderly German or Swiss residing 
in New York City, if memory serves me correctly, 
who had known him personally. He said Mon- 
sieur Constant lived a retired life on the shore of 
Lake Geneva, and was held in great respect and 
veneration by his neighbors. One of his nephews 
had held the office of consul at St. Louis, Missouri, 
and this fact probably accounted for the presence 
of the volume in the farm house in Champaign 
County, Illinois. Unfortunately, this letter has 
been lost or mislaid during the wanderings inci- 
dent to my intervening life. I am in hopes of 
finding it when opportunity presents for a thor- 
ough research, and of embodying it in the preface 
to the next edition. In the meantime, I shall be 
grateful for any additional information. Surely 
such a profound thinker, lover of humanity, seer, 
and poet must have won recognition in his native 
land and have left other evidences of his extraor- 


PREFACE 


dinary literary ability. Some knowledge of the 
personal life of an author adds interest and pleas- 
ure to the perusal of his writings, in addition to 
that excited by their intrinsic merits. It is to be 
hoped that the circulation of this edition will lead 
to the unearthing of other gems produced by this 
genius. Persons having knowledge of A. Con- 
stant of Geneva will confer a favor by correspond- 
ing with the writer or the publisher. 

The phraseology of the first English edition ’ 
has been substantially retained. A few para- 
graphs in the First Legend had been eaten away 
by mice, and were rewritten from memory. Per- 
haps the discriminating reader may notice a varia- 
tion from the general style and elegance of dic- 
tion; but the thought and intent of the author were 
fully kept in mind. 

When it is considered that The Last Incarna- 
tion was written three quarters of a century ago, 
its remarkable character is brought out in bold 
relief. At that time our present industrial sys- 
tem must have been in embryo. Child labor and 
the employment of underpaid women could 
scarcely have been burning problems, yet his pre- 
science enabled him to depict the horrible indus- 
trial purgatory just as it exists to-day. The an- 
tagonism of labor and capital had not then 
reached an acute stage, yet he portrayed present 
conditions most truthfully. The coalition be- 


PREFACE 


tween politicians and what is known as “ big busi- 
ness ” or “ the interests ” in exploiting the people 
could not have found lodgment in thought at that 
time, yet he foresaw it in the zenith of its power. 
Being a prophet like unto Isaiah of old, his cosmic 
consciousness enabled him to speak in the present 
tense of events still lying in the womb of Time. 

In this book, I first saw mention made of the two 
great laws of nature: the unity of substance and 
the harmony of the movement by which it is modi- 
fied. It also drew my attention to the nature of 
evil : that it could not be absolute, and that it ex- 
isted only for beings which are still imperfect. 
That God always reigns, and that his kingdom 
can be realized by humanity coming into it, is 
herein elucidated. Many volumes have been 
written and cults have been built upon these lem- 
mas in the past few years, but seventy-five years 
ago such illuminated perception must have been 
rare indeed. That society is a solidarity in its 
crimes, is responsible for them equally with the 
malefactors, which he emphasizes, is another tru- 
ism which was beyond the consciousness of Con- 
stant’s time. He also foresaw the coming union 
of Science and Religion — the reconciliation of 
Reason and Faith, now in progress. 

The eager, inquisitive boy who was the cause 
of the preservation of The Last Incarnation in 
the English language passed to his reward a few 


PREFACE 


years ago at an advanced age. The workingman 
who set the type during his leisure moments for 
the reprint is well advanced into the last decade 
of the three score years and ten allotted by the 
Psalmist as the span of earthly life. For many 
years it had been his dream to present the book 
in a pleasing and attractive form ; the first editions 
were cheap affairs. At last he has been permitted 
to realize his ambition, and the handsome volume 
is offered in the belief that it will receive a cordial 
welcome. 

To the earnest searcher for Truth, to the lover 
of his fellow men, to the believer in the teach- 
ings of Christ, the perusal of this little book, with 
its beautiful diction, its poetic imagery, its pro- 
found philosophy and spirit of infinite love, can- 
not prove otherwise than an inspiration and a 
benediction. 

Charles H. Kohlman. 

5838 Gunnison St., 

Chicago 111 ., April, 1914. 



THE LAST INCARNATION 



THE LAST INCARNATION 


PROLOGUE 

I 

1 WILL not leave you fatherless,” said the 
Christ, when about to quit the earth; “ I will 
come again to you.” 

Ye people, who have believed in the words 
of the Christ, and who still await a consoler, 
know that the Christ, your Savior, has never 
abandoned you. Know that he suffers with you, 
that he labors with you, that he groans, and that 
he prays with you. 

The Christ is the human form of the divine 
idea. That form you are all called upon to re- 
alize, and to clothe yourselves anew with its royal 
majesty. 

A model has been given to us in the person of 
Jesus, our brother, the head and the mediator of 
humanity, in whom God himself lived, willed and 
acted, so that his person was that of the Man- 
God. 

Now, Jesus, the Man-God, did not accomplish 

9 


10 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


life in all its phases; he went through only the 
sorrowful periods here below. 

Because it was necessary that humanity should 
first learn how to suffer, in order to know how to 
be happy afterwards; should know how to obey, 
in order to learn how to reign. It was to holy 
and austere poverty that was intrusted the educa- 
tion of the heirs of God, in order that through 
privations they might learn the true use of their 
Father’s riches. 

In teaching men to love their neighbor more 
than themselves, and their soul more than their 
body, and God more than their soul, the Christ 
emancipated them from the servitude of the flesh, 
and he elevated the flesh itself by calling it to 
share the liberty of free souls. 

The Christ did not limit his word to an ex- 
clusive form; the spirit of which it contains the 
germ is universal. 

He sowed the seed, and time has ripened the 
grain. 

The word of the Christ, like that of the ancient 
prophets, has had unintelligent and self-interested 
interpreters, who have wished to seal it like the 
stone of his sepulcher. 

But the word traverses stones, and cannot be 
kept captive; it escapes in spite of walls; it passes 
in spite of gates of iron; it goes forth in spite of 
sentinels. 


PROLOGUE 


1 1 

Brothers, the word of the Christ is the word of 
liberty, of equality, of fraternity. 

Of liberty, because he has told us not to fear 
those who can kill the body, and to preserve be- 
fore God the independence of our souls. 

Of equality, because he has said to us: You have 
all only one and the same father, one and the same 
master: he is God, and you are all brothers. 

Of fraternity, because he has told the strong 
to be the protectors of the weak, the learned to 
instruct the ignorant, the rich to provide for the 
necessities of the poor. 

This word presided at first over the construc- 
tion of the hierarchical body of the primitive 
church; then the priests were fathers chosen by 
the people; the bishops were superintendents, who 
took care of the poor, and who protected the or- 
phans and the widows; and all, from a spirit of 
conciliation and peace, referred their differences 
to a single judge chosen from among themselves, 
and who was therefore called the servant of the 
servants of God. 

Oh ! how beautiful was the Church then, in the 
unity of her head and in the harmony of her mem- 
bers ! How grand was that society of brothers, 
presided over by its fathers, and administered to 
by its old men ! 

The unity of object, and the simplicity of means, 
found a use in the cooperation of each in the work 


12 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


of all; each group of the system moved harmoni- 
ously around its center, like the satellites around 
their planets, which themselves move peacefully 
around the sun. 

Then the interest of the pastors was that of 
their flocks, and that avarice which destroyed 
Judas had not yet brought trouble into the sanc- 
tuary; pride had not yet transformed the charges 
of charity into prerogatives and worldly gran- 
deurs, and the rival passions had not divided the 
inheritance of the Lord. 

But, in order that it might be overcome by good, 
evil had to be manifested; and the Christian law 
was as a snare spread for the errors and the ir- 
regularities of the flesh. 

Human vices, by manifesting themselves in the 
Church of the Christ, condemned themselves; 
therefore they were not able to prevail there even 
for a few moments, but by means of hypocrisy and 
lying. 

When misguided pontiffs surpassed the luxury 
and the insolence of kings, the spirit of the 
Church, which has never ceased to be that of the 
Christ, groaned in the heart of the saints, and 
condemned the sacrilegious usurpers, by always 
reminding the sovereign pontiff that he was the 
servant of the servants of God. 

When the inquisition tortured souls and bodies, 
to constrain that which God himself respects in 


PROLOGUE 


i3 


man, — liberty of conscience, the spirit of the 
Christ wept over the victims, and justly excom- 
municated the persecutors, by protesting that the 
Church has a horror of blood. 

Thus, by their very crimes, the priests have 
shown more magnificently and more splendidly 
how holy is religion! 

Now the Church seems to sleep a sleep of 
death, because the priests have separated them- 
selves from the people, and form a caste apart, im- 
bued with Pharisaical traditions and the preju- 
dices of education; but the Church cannot be sep- 
arated from humanity. If the priests remain sta- 
tionary while humanity advances, it is because they 
wish soon to separate themselves from the re- 
ligion of the Christ, for the spirit of the Savior 
of the people advances with the people. 

Those men have grown old, without being able 
to free their feet from the swaddling bands of 
their earliest infancy! They believe in the Gos- 
pel, without interrogating its admirable symbol- 
ism, and they admit its marvels literally, as little 
children give faith to the fantastic stories of the 
woman who rocks them. 

They are the guardians of the doctrine after the 
manner of the sentinels of kings’ palaces; they 
defend the entrance and do not go in themselves. 
The dead letter has remained in their hands, as 
the mortal body of the Christ remained in the 


14 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


arms of his weeping mother, under the lowering 
and gloomy sky of Calvary; but the spirit has 
gone to make war on the powers of darkness, to 
break the gates of hell, and to deliver the groan- 
ing crowd of captive souls. 

Everywhere the spirit of the Gospel makes con- 
quests, except in the closed minds and frozen 
hearts of those who call themselves the deposi- 
taries of the Gospel. 

The sciences gravitate toward their grand syn- 
thesis; unity governs all ideas, and harmony ar- 
ranges them in a marvelous order; analogy gives 
to faith, enlightened by science, the key of all 
problems; synthesis brings together all symbols, 
and proclaims religious unity by the voice of all 
ages; the truly Catholic idea merely begins to be 
born, and those old men are there, stopping their 
ears, closing their eyes, making themselves mo- 
tionless upon the ruins of the past, like urns upon 
graves ! 

Well, then, since those who should teach the 
people have no longer any voice, since the Word 
has no longer any need of them for interpreters, 
let us borrow a new gospel legend from the genius 
of the people, and from their aspirations after hu- 
manitary progress. 

Let us complete the epopceia of the Christ by 
the allegorical recital of his second coming, and 


PROLOGUE 


i5 

let us relate his triumphs to those who have wept 
so much over his sorrows. 

II 

The Son of God is the perfect man; he is the 
idea of human perfection manifested by the word 
and realized by works. 

God utters from all eternity the word that must 
save the people; and humanity works and ad- 
vances in progress, only to realize that word. 

The divine idea of human perfection was re- 
alized in different degrees in all the great men 
who were the heads and models of society; then 
it was completed and summed up in Jesus. 

And Jesus, having given himself entire to hu- 
manity, by a devotedness without bounds, has 
transmitted his life entire, under the symbols of the 
fraternal bread and the wine of union, to the whole 
of humanity, which he has thus formed into a 
single body. 

So that now the Christ is no longer an indi- 
vidual; he is a people. 

He lives in all those who are animated by the 
spirit of the Gospel ; he speaks by the mouth of all 
those who utter a word conformable to his. 

He has promised that the reign of intelligence 
should be his reign, and that his second coming 


1 6 THE LAST INCARNATION 

should bring down the clouds from heaven, that 
is to say, should free religion from its mysteries 
and its fables. 

He must shine as the lightning, which shines 
from the east even to the west; and the eagles of 
genius must gather together to reply to his call. 

Let this book then be the last legend of Jesus, 
the son of Mary. Let us cause his sweet and di- 
vine figure to descend from heaven and traverse 
the earth, assuming all forms, as in the marvelous 
stories of the middle ages, in order to give instruc- 
tion to all, and to prepare for his great coming! 

Let the people read and at last understand 
truth under the form of allegories; let it recog- 
nize and love always its Savior and its model, 
in the person of the proletary of Galilee. 

We shall borrow from the ancient gospel legend 
its simple and popular form; for he who speaks 
to all must use language which may be understood 
by all. 


FIRST LEGEND 


THE LITTLE CHILD WHO SEEKS HIS FATHER AND 
HIS MOTHER 

A T that time there was a little child 
who walked all alone in the country, 
and who seated himself by the side of 
the road and cried. 

His poor little feet were swollen and sore; his 
short little hands were blue with cold; for it was 
at the end of autumn, and the north wind whirled 
about the last yellow leaves of the stripped trees. 

He was barely covered by a poor little dress of 
thin woolen stuff, and the frost of the morning, 
which had been melted from the trees by the pale 
sun, had wet the curls of his blonde hair with a 
freezing rain. 

There was an inexpressible sweetness in his 
eyes full of tears; and while his eyes wept, his lit- 
tle, shivering mouth seemed to try to smile. 

He rested for a moment, then he clasped his 
hands as if in prayer, and courageously resumed 
his walk. 

And to all those who passed and who asked 
*7 


i8 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


him why he cried, the poor child answered, “ I 
am seeking my father and mother.” 

Now, on that day a young and rich lady was 
returning in a carriage from her beautiful coun- 
try seat. 

She was magnificently arrayed and voluptuously 
perfumed; seated upon soft cushions covered with 
silk, she was sad and disgusted with life : for God 
had not made her a mother. 

She saw the little child who was walking with 
bare feet and who was cold, and she felt her heart 
moved at the sight of his wonderful beauty. 

Then she stopped her carriage, and having 
called the poor little traveler, she said to him, 
“ Where are you going? ” 

“ I am going to seek my father and mother,” 
replied the little child. 

“And where are your father and your mother? 
Are they far from here?” 

“They are travelers like me upon the earth; 
and while I seek them here perhaps they are seek- 
ing me farther off, with much anxiety and sor- 
row.” 

“ How long since did you leave them? ” 

“ I did not leave them; they went away from 
me to work, in order that they might get food 
for me. But, perhaps, they may not have been 
able to find bread for their work, and have gone 
still farther; then perhaps still farther off, and I 


THE LITTLE CHILD 19 

have remained an orphan because my parents were 
poor.” 

“ Well, I am rich, and I wish to be a mother to 
you in order that I may have something to care 
for. Now climb up into my carriage,” for the 
road was damp and the lady did not wish to soil 
her rich dress. 

But the child said: “No, madam, you cannot 
be a mother to me. The heart of a mother is like 
the heart of God. My mother, with tender af- 
fection — not pity — would have descended to 
the earth to clasp me to a heart filled with purest 
love. The rich cushions on which you sit are per- 
haps wet with the tears of the workman.” 

The lady was surprised, but felt the force of the 
child’s words, and she wept: but fearing lest her 
eyes might be red from weeping, she wiped them 
and ordered her coachman to drive on, while her 
thoughts again turned to parties and dances. 

The little one again pursued his way. The 
next person whom he met was a haughty cavalier, 
who came near riding over the humble child, being 
too proud to deign any notice of him. 

An old man, a priest, then came slowly walk- 
ing along the highway, reading a holy book. He 
looked up and beheld the child. “ Whence come 
you and who are your parents? ” said he. 

The child replied, “ My parents are poor, and 
while they seek work to buy bread for them and 


20 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


me, I have lost them, and wander about in pur- 
suit of my father and mother; they, perhaps, are 
now seeking in vain for me.” 

“ To what parish do they belong? ” said the 
priest, who was a devout man, and whose life had 
been spent in the most austere observance of all 
religious precepts. 

“ To all parishes,” said the child. 

“ Then your parents are vagabonds,” and the 
priest flung a small coin upon the roadside at the 
child’s feet. 

“ My parents are not vagabonds,” said the lit- 
tle one, “ and God does not tell you to teach little 
children to dishonor their father and mother. I 
did not ask you for money, but for my parents.” 

“ I do not know your father.” 

“ And yet,” said the child, “ you claim to be 
his priest, and that he is known to you as the 
Creator.” 

“ In that case, your father must be God.” 

“ It is you who teach little children to say, 1 Our 
Father who art in Heaven.’ ” 

“ My little man, you are a reasoner, and that 
does not become childhood.” 

“ Reason becomes all ages, and I did but an- 
swer when questioned by you.” 

“ All is lost,” said the divine; “ the very coun- 
try children dispute with us.” And he pursued 
his journey and the perusal of his book. 


THE LITTLE CHILD 


21 


Meantime the little wayfarer toiled onward 
until he approached the outskirts of a great city. 
Here a poor woman who was gathering a few 
scanty faggots beheld him, and taking his little 
cold hand in hers, questioned him. She took him 
to her own humble dwelling. When they entered 
her children drew together closely, shivering over 
the scanty embers in the fireplace, but made no 
room for the strange child, toward whom they cast 
jealous looks. The mother upbraided them and 
struck the eldest with her hand, who at once fell 
to the ground and expired. The mother, shriek- 
ing “What have I done! ” clasped her child to 
her breast and laid the small, lifeless body upon 
the bed. Then she turned to the Christ-child. 
“ Go away! ” said she. “ You have brought me 
sorrow and death for the good I would have done 
you.” 

But the Christ-child breathed upon the lips of 
the dead boy and laid his hand upon its breast, 
whereupon the little one heaved a deep sigh and 
sat up again, a living child. The Christ-child 
then blessed the children and their mother and 
took from his bosom a little cross which he gave 
to her. 

That evening he was seen at a short distance 
from there, upon the bank of a stream which was 
crossed by a plank placed on two stones; the child 
was seated in the moonlight, the wind raised his 


22 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


blonde hair, and he pressed his two little arms 
crossed upon his breast as if to warm himself. 
Someone asked him in passing what he was waiting 
for. He replied: 

“ I am waiting for my father.” 

Soon afterwards, a poor blind old man came 
to cross, and he directed his steps towards the 
bridge of the stream, by feeling with his stick 
along the rough and stony ground. 

Then the child rose, and running to meet the 
poor blind man, he took him by the hand and led 
him, for the road in that place was dangerous and 
broken. 

Then placing the hand of the old man on his 
shoulder, he served him for a support as far as 
the neighboring city, which they entered without 
being seen. 

The child conducted the old man to his dwelling, 
but he was not willing to enter, for he said to 
him : 

“ My mother is waiting for me.” 

And in one of the most retired suburbs of the 
city he went and rapped softly at the door of a 
house which was carefully closed. 

“ Who is there? ” asked a woman’s voice, the 
accent of which was profoundly desolate. 

“ It is your son; open,” said the little child. 

“ My son will not come back again,” said the 


THE LITTLE CHILD 


23 

voice, “ he died yesterday, and to-day he was put 
into the ground.” 

“ Open to me,” replied the child. “ I am Jesus, 
the friend of those who weep, and I have made 
myself once more a little child, in order to restore 
to you him whom you think you have lost ! Open 
to me! for Mary, my celestial mother, holds your 
little child upon her knees, in the paradise of in- 
nocence; and she sends hers to you that you may 
be very sure that he whom you love is very 
happy.” 

Then the door opened softly and the child en- 
tered; he seated himself on the knees of the poor 
mother, and related to her how he had come, and 
how he had tried the hearts of those whom he had 
met on his route. 

Then the mother having ceased weeping, asked 
him if those who had met him without knowing 
him would be punished for not having assisted 
him. 

“ They will be sufficiently punished when they 
shall know that it was I,” replied Jesus. “ And 
they will know it when they begin to become bet- 
ter; for the regret of a good deed is the greatest 
punishment for not having done it. I revisit the 
earth to try and console. So long as I still retain 
the form of a child, I shall seek my father and 
my mother. But as perhaps no one yet knows 


24 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


how to accomplish all his duties towards a child, 
I shall first give the example of accomplishing 
those of a child. I shall not again find my father 
and my mother here below; but I will choose them 
from among those who have need of a child to 
love them. The blind man whom I can guide to 
prevent him from stumbling over the stones of 
the road shall be my father, the poor widow who 
weeps, and whom I can console, shall be my 
mother, and the deserted orphans who have no 
one to love them shall be my brothers and my 
sisters.” 


SECOND LEGEND 


THE SAME CHILD AND THE SAME PRIESTS, AFTER 
AN INTERVAL OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
AND FORTY YEARS 

T HE Christ appeared to sleep in the 
house of the poor widow; but during 
the hours of night, his soul returned 
to heaven, in order not to see the 
crimes of earth. 

He revisited the paradise of innocence, and 
caressed his new brother, the widow’s son, to 
whom he spoke of his poor mother, now less deso- 
late : the soul of Christ loves to rest in heaven 
among little children, and to resume all the in- 
fantile graces which filled the soul of Mary with 
so sorrowful a happiness, when, in the midst of 
the caresses of her well-beloved son, she had a 
presentiment of the anguish of Calvary! Now 
the celestial virgin no longer fears that her ten- 
der child may die a second time, and she knows 
that henceforth he will no more be taken from 
her; nevertheless the ecstasy of her happiness is 
still imbued with a remembrance full of melan- 
choly; and the joy of the formerly sorrowful 
25 


2 6 THE LAST INCARNATION 


mother (Mater dolorosa) remains in a concen- 
tration which resembles sadness. 

“ Mother,” said Jesus to her, “ now that I am 
no longer a mortal man, but a human form of the 
divine idea, I can descend upon the earth without 
suffering there, and without ceasing to be near 
you ! I will assume, to instruct men, the appear- 
ances of childhood, of weakness, of suffering; I 
have already begun to appear to them under the 
figure of a child, only they will no longer see either 
my birth or my death. I shall go through all the 
phases of life in my appearances, and will trans- 
figure myself as my doctrine must be transfigured; 
will you, O my mother, also be willing to speak 
sometimes to those who are likewise your chil- 
dren? ” 

“ It shall be done according to your will, my 
sweet lord and son,” said Mary, kissing him on 
the forehead. “ I know that if you are the type 
of the perfect man, I must serve as a model of 
the woman and the mother; my heart never leaves 
you, O my son ! I shall be near you when you 
again traverse the earth ; if it be necessary to man- 
ifest to men my symbolical form, you have only 
to will, and I shall appear to them. Go, there- 
fore, and do according to your desire; for already 
the sun has reappeared upon the earth, where 
your human appearance now rests asleep: the 
hours pass quickly in heavenly conversations, and 


CHILD JESUS AND PRIESTS 27 

do you go now and wake again upon the earth, 
my beautiful beloved child ! ” 

The sun began to raise the grayish veil which 
covered the black bell-towers, the bluish domes, 
and the moist roofs of the city in which the divine 
child slept. 

The poor widow had already risen, and, look- 
ing upon the Son of God as he slept, she thought 
she again saw her child for whom she had wept 
so much. 

He rose; and both together prayed to our 
Father who is in heaven. 

Then the Savior said to the woman : 

“ Mother, I am going now where the service of 
my father calls me. I shall come back this even- 
ing, therefore weep no more.” 

The widow fell upon her knees, and dared not 
retain him. It was now broad daylight, and 
Jesus having gone out, walked through the streets 
of the city. 

Then the children of the people, seeing his 
beauty, his gentleness, and his strange dress, be- 
gan to follow after him, mocking him; and Jesus 
continued on his way without looking at them and 
without uttering a word. 

Rut he groaned in himself, and he prayed while 
he said: “ How shall these arrive at the knowl- 
edge of their rights, if they grow up thus in 
insolence, and in the forgetfulness of fraternity! 


28 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


Poor children of the people, your greatest mis- 
fortune is not poverty, it is ignorance and brutish- 
ness ! Happy will he be who shall teach you your 
duties, and shall make you love them. For you 
will then know your rights, and virtue will make 
you free.” 

Then one of those children, more wicked than 
the others, and irritated because Jesus answered 
nothing, approached him with an insolent air, and 
struck him. 

Jesus stopped him, and said to him with gentle- 
ness. 

“ What have I done to you? It is not I who 
will return to you the evil that you do to me, but 
others will return it to you. For you are wicked, 
and the world, which is wicked like you, will re- 
turn to you evil for evil.” 

Having said these words, the child Jesus dis- 
appeared from the midst of the children of the 
people, and all searched for him with astonished 
eyes. 

Now, in the porch of a neighboring temple, 
other children were seated, and a priest, standing 
in the midst, instructed them. 

Jesus came and took a seat among the children, 
and listened to the priest. 

Then when the priest had finished speaking, he 
questioned the children; and having come to Jesus, 
he asked him, “ What is God? ” 


CHILD JESUS AND PRIESTS 29 


“ God alone ca,n himself say what he is,” re- 
plied the child; “but you could not understand 
his words, for they would be infinite and eternal.” 

“ That is not rightly answered,” said the priest; 
“ you should say, God is a spirit, eternal, inde- 
pendent, unchangeable and infinite, who is present 
everywhere, who sees everything, who can do 
everything, who has created all things, and who 
governs all things.” 

“ I do not understand,” said the child Jesus. 
“ You say that God is a spirit; are there then sev- 
eral spirits like unto God? Why do you not say 
that God is spirit? And then I should ask you 
if God is spirit only? is he not love and power? ” 

“ I do not understand in my turn,” said the 
priest. 

“ Why then do you endeavor to explain what 
you can not understand? What is God for us? 
He is our father who is in heaven: we know noth- 
ing more of him. Look at the world, and you 
will not doubt his being: but do not endeavor to 
define it; for how will you express by human words 
him whom immensity cannot contain? him who, in 
producing by his word millions of suns and of 
worlds, has hardly pronounced for us the first let- 
ter of his name? ” 

“Do you come here to insult your pastor?” 
replied the old priest, with bitterness. “ Since 
you are so wise and have learned your lesson so 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


30 

well, you need not come here again : begone ! ” 

“ And why should I go out from the house of 
prayer? are you here to drive away the little chil- 
dren whom your master called around him? You 
are more proud and more harsh than the doctors 
of Jerusalem, for when the child Jesus came to 
converse with them in the temple, they questioned 
him and replied to him, being astonished at the 
wisdom of his words; but it is not said that they 
wished to drive him away.” 

At these words, the priest became red with an- 
ger. He opened his mouth to speak, but he found 
no voice; in vain did he move his lips and his 
tongue while he rolled his eyes, — his power of 
speech had been taken from him, and he could no 
longer articulate any sound. 

Then Jesus ascended slowly towards the altar, 
took the priest’s chair, and seating himself in his 
presence, he began to teach. 

“ My brothers and my sisters,” said he to the 
children, “ do not try to know what God is; you 
could not comprehend him; but endeavor to love 
him by thinking that he is good and that he loves 
you. Do not repeat at hazard that he is a spirit, 
for you cannot understand what a spirit is: but 
obey him as you obey your father and your 
mother. For it is he who wishes your mother to 
love you, and your father to work for you. And 
if your father should die, and if your mother were 


CHILD JESUS AND PRIESTS 31 

taken from you, think that you have always a 
father in heaven, and that God will always love 
you as your mother has loved you. 

“ You are all brothers, because God is the father 
of you all : and he loves you all, the poor as well 
as the rich, but more particularly the poor, be- 
cause they have more to suffer. Be therefore like 
God your father: love each other all of you with- 
out distinction : but love most those who are the 
weakest, the smallest and the poorest, in order 
that you may be like your good father, who will 
see it and who will bless you. 

“ You are glad when people love you and when 
they do good to you. You do not like to have 
them take away what is yours, to have them insult 
you, strike you or prevent you without good rea- 
son from doing what you wish. Those who do 
not love you and who do you harm, you say that 
they are wicked; and those who love you and are 
kind to you, you say they are good. 

“ Well, if you wish to be the children of God 
and to obey him, never be wicked, for God is not 
wicked. On the contrary, be always good, and 
do as much good to the world as you can; for 
God is good and can do only good. 

“ Pray to your father that he may make you 
good: it is his will and his desire; but it must also 
be your desire and your will, and the more you are 
accustomed to pray, the more you will be accus- 


32 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


tomed to desire what is good. Now, when you 
often desire to be good, by degrees you become 
better. 

“ Pray; because prayer makes you think of 
God; and the thought of God is a good and salu- 
tary thought. Pray often; because your youth 
distracts you, and you have frequent need to be 
recalled to wisdom.” 

When the child Jesus had finished speaking, 
the old priest, who had again come to himself, 
fell at his feet, and suddenly recovering the power 
of speech, said to him: “Lord, forgive me, for 
I could not at first believe that it was thou. The 
words which thou hast uttered are those of the 
Savior of the world; and I was deprived of voice 
because thou alone hast the words of eternal 
truth.” 

Jesus said to him: “You know not how to 
understand, because for too long a time you have 
ceased to love. Still it is not you who are culpa- 
ble, but those who have brought you up thus. I 
know your uprightness and the purity of your 
morals, according to the world; but know that, be- 
fore my Father, it is charity which purifies. 

“ Therefore, old man, if you wish to enter into 
life, become again a little child and ask God to 
grant you a little simplicity and love. Fill no 
longer with empty words the flock which I have 
intrusted to you; love children in order that they 


CHILD JESUS AND PRIESTS 33 

may understand, for their understanding is in the 
heart.” 

And rising, Jesus went out from the temple. 

At the door he found a woman who was waiting 
for him and who said: “Good Savior, divine 
child of all desolate mothers, brother of all or- 
phans, forgive me for having approached this tem- 
ple at the sound of thy voice. How could I re- 
main alone in my dwelling after having received 
thee there; and whither can I go henceforth ex- 
cept in the traces of thy blessed feet? ” 

Jesus answered her: 

“ Mother, you know well that I love you, why 
then should you fear to be left alone? Do not 
attach yourself so much to the form which passes. 
To-day I appear under the figure of a child, and 
to-morrow under another appearance; but my 
spirit is always the same. 

“ My spirit is that of God living in humanity; 
and if all understood that spirit, there would be 
no more death, for humanity does not die. 

“ The mother who has lost her child, and the 
child who has lost its mother, are they not made 
to come together and be united? Can you say 
that you are alone in the world, and have you not 
always the means of loving? 

“ Woman, I shall return this evening to your 
humble dwelling in order to drive away the re- 
membrance of death and to bless it; but to-mor- 


34 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


row, if you seek me again under the form which 
I have to-day, you will no longer find me. 

“ Then, if you wish to find me, search among 
the children who are deserted and who weep. 
And if you find one who, at night, knows not where 
to lay his head, and who will be thrown into prison, 
with the malefactors, because he is an orphan and 
forsaken, woman, take him by the hand, for I tell 
you in truth that he is your son, and that all the 
good which you shall do him, you will have done 
to me.” 

On finishing these words, the child was carried 
elsewhere by the spirit of God, and the woman re- 
sumed the road to her house, meditating upon the 
words of Jesus in the bottom of her heart. 


THIRD LEGEND 


THE MARTYRDOM OF THE INNOCENTS 

A FTER this, the Christ, by the divine 
power of the spirit, translated himself 
into several places at once; for his 
love led him to visit the sufferings of 
children, and among so many poignant sufferings 
which called to him at the same time, he would 
not have known which to choose in order to visit 
first. 

He saw, therefore, at the same time the thou- 
sand stations of this horrible industrial purgatory, 
in which are tortured the children of the people. 
There he saw meager women, with cadaverous 
and fixed looks, working without respite and with- 
out repose to prolong for a few days the existence 
of their little children, who seemed, during that 
time, to sleep by their side. 

But the poor innocents did not sleep, they were 
in a lethargy! For, to prevent them from suf- 
fering and crying during the long days of torture, 
their mothers themselves had made them take a 
poison which kills slowly and which deadens pain. 
Other children, larger, but still more sad to 
35 


36 THE LAST INCARNATION 

look upon, were working like the wheels of the 
machines, which incessantly threatened them with 
a horrible death, if they allowed their attention 
to be distracted for a single moment. There pre- 
vailed a silence of death, only interrupted some- 
times by words which seemed to come from hell. 

The Child-God did not speak to them, for they 
could not have understood him; he did not mani- 
fest himself to their eyes, they would not have 
recognized him; only he went and came in the 
midst of those poor children, and touching their 
head and their chest he renewed their courage and 
prevented thought from being awakened in their 
mind. 

His eyes were filled with tears, and in the pres- 
ence of so much suffering, he again clothed him- 
self with the bleeding remembrances of Calvary. 
The crown of thorns seemed to tear his brow 
afresh, the marks of the nails made his hands and 
his feet bloody, and his arms were sadly clasped 
around the cross. 

And he began again to pray as he had prayed 
in the garden of Olives, with a mortal sadness 
and inexpressible anguish. And he said: “My 
Father, take pity on the suffering of the innocents ! 
touch the hearts of the rich, and bring about the 
deliverance of the poor! ” 

And he went thus, suffering, praying and weep- 
ing, from house to house, seeking the rich and the 


MARTYRDOM OF INNOCENTS 37 

owners of the factories, looking upon them and 
passing before them, while he showed them his 
child’s face torn by the horrible crown, and his 
little hands pierced, and his cross, and his blood, 
and his tears. 

But those men, in consequence of loving and 
serving the idols of gold and of silver, had become 
like unto them; they had eyes and they saw not, 
they had ears and they did not wish to hear. 
Those among them who perceived the Christ or 
who deigned to remark him, asked him with an 
ironical smile if he brought them any money. 

Then the Christ gathered in his hand his tears 
and the blood which flowed from his heart, and 
every tear was changed into a piece of silver, and 
every drop of blood into a piece of gold. And 
he gave these to them in his indignation, saying 
to them: “ You have made me change my tears 
into silver, and my blood into gold ; but when my 
father shall do justice, shudder and tremble ! the 
silver shall again become tears for you and the 
gold shall again become blood, and you will be 
compelled to repay with usury.” 

Then he left them and transported himself 
with the rapidity of thought into the houses where 
were taught the children of the rich. There it 
was no longer the prolonged agony of the body; 
it was the torture of the soul. The children, 
ranged in herds, were pent up within gloomy walls, 


38 THE LAST INCARNATION 

and forced to apply their minds, suffering and re- 
pelled, to repugnant studies. Instead of the sweet 
teachings of their mother, they heard only the 
disagreeable and monotonous voice of a master 
hired to repeat to them always the same things. 
And the ennui which this caused them was pun- 
ished in them as a fault. If they had the good 
sense not to understand anything of that nonsense 
called wise, if their memory relieved itself by for- 
getting, they were deprived of air and food, they 
were refused some moments of that recreation 
which nature made imperatively necessary for 
them, and they were compelled to expiate their 
disgust of a repugnant and useless task, by a task 
more useless and more repugnant still. It was 
thus their minds were stupified and their hearts 
obliterated in order to make of them machines for 
the production of money, and the deaf and dumb 
slaves of pitiless property. 

Jesus comprehended all these distressing things, 
and saw several of those children, already made 
old by impiety and disgust, seek in shameful hab- 
its an often fatal distraction. 

And he said to himself that the children of the 
rich were not more happy than those of the poor; 
this is why, thought he, those are happy whom 
intelligence and love have freed from the servi- 
tude of riches! The true riches of man are the 
noble faculties of his soul, when God satisfies and 


MARTYRDOM OF INNOCENTS 39 

animates them! The real treasures of man are 
those which he carries everywhere with him, and 
which no one can take from him; the joy of a 
good conscience, the dignity of a free will, and 
the noble love of God and of his creatures! 

And Jesus passed through the midst of those 
children, who did not deign to speak to him, be- 
cause he had the appearance of a child of the peo- 
ple. Others laughed at him as had done the chil- 
dren of the street, and a man who assumed the 
title of master did not impose silence on them, but 
approaching Jesus asked him who he was and how 
he had entered. 

Jesus answered him: “I am the child who 
teaches masters, and I have come down from 
Heaven because you have closed your doors 
against me. I am the truth which judges your 
teachings, and which has found them to be lies. 
For, instead of bringing up the children of God 
for immortality, and of thinking to make them 
men, you bring them up slaves of the demon of 
riches for the corruption of all, and you make of 
them animals with rapacious instincts. 

“ You think you are the high priest of the sci- 
ences, and you are sacrificers to Moloch. You 
think you have the key of the doors of life, and 
you open only the gate of hell. You pretend to 
form men, and you know neither what a man is, 
nor what are his high destinies. 


4 o 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


“ And how shall you teach these children whom 
you know not how to love, and whose wants you 
do not comprehend? How can you make the 
young flower of their thought to bloom in the rays 
of the sun of God? You do not see the divine 
sun, and you tread heavily upon the flowers of 
life. 

“ But you cannot even understand my words, 
and to awaken your heart is required the sweet 
and insinuating voice of my mother. Come, O 
Mary! let your crown of gentle light dissipate by 
degrees the darkness of their hearts. Men do 
not know how to love children; it is for a woman 
to teach them. Come, O model of mothers, con- 
sole all these poor orphans, instruct those who tor- 
ment them ! ” 

After these words, Jesus departed; and every- 
where that he had been seen to pass appeared, 
walking in his footsteps, the divine figure of Mary, 
beautiful with ineffable compassion and radiant 
with gentleness. She wiped the brow of the poor 
children of the people, condemned to the pitiless 
labor of the factories, and embraced them by 
turns, telling them to take courage and to hope. 
Then the poor little ones felt their hearts moved, 
their eyes again found some tears, and they felt 
themselves happy that they could weep. 

Then Mary passed into the prisons where the 
education of the age enchains its sad captives, and 


MARTYRDOM OF INNOCENTS 41 


a single smile of her mouth taught much more 
to those poor children than all the lessons of their 
masters, for they remembered their mothers, and 
they experienced the desire to be better on feeling 
reawaken within them the necessity of loving. 


FOURTH LEGEND 


THE APPRENTICE CARPENTER 

A T that time, Jesus said: “ In order to 
render the condition of the children 
better, it is first necessary to teach 
their fathers and their mothers. 

“ When men shall be associated in their labor, 
the heaviest burdens will not weigh upon the weak- 
est, and when all shall work, there will be rest for 
all. Then the rich will no longer torture their 
own children in order to fit them for unjust dom- 
ination, and the poor will not be compelled to 
bend their youngest sons to the sorrows of servi- 
tude. For selfish passions will no longer stifle 
nature, and men will understand that labor is a 
duty and should never be a punishment. For 
there is no one to whom Providence has not given 
more fitness for one function than for another; 
and labor ought to be distributed according to the 
inclinations, and divided according to the strength 
of each. 

“ As to education, it ought to be common to 
all, like the light of the sun, for all desire it and 
feel the need of it. And when it shall no longer 
be falsified in its direction and barbarous in its 


43 


44 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


methods, it will be a reward and a happiness for 
all children.” 

Jesus said this as he passed near a harbor where 
the carpenters were at work building a vessel. 
Some were squaring a large tree which was to be 
placed at the keel, and others were smoothing and 
adjusting planks of equal size, to form the sides 
of the hull. And all worked according to a plan 
and upon precise measures, in order that the work 
of one should conform to that of another, and that 
the whole should be harmoniously composed of all 
the parts. 

Jesus, under the figure of a youth, approached 
the foreman who had the superintendence of the 
work, and asked him if he could not give him oc- 
cupation among his workmen. 

The foreman looked at him disdainfully, and 
said to him: “What use could you be to us? 
You are not strong enough? ” 

Jesus then noticed ten stout men who could not 
succeed in lifting an enormous piece of timber, 
because they distributed their forces badly and did 
not act together. All the strongest were on one 
side, and on the other all the weakest; so that the 
piece of timber, when raised on one side, threat- 
ened to fall on the other, and to crush a part of 
the workmen. 

Jesus approached and said to them, “ Broth- 
ers, let me help you.” 


THE APPRENTICE CARPENTER 45 

And they began to laugh, leaving their hard 
labor in order to wipe the sweat from their brows. 

But Jesus spoke to them with so much gentle- 
ness that they allowed themselves to be advised 
by him : he distributed the greatest strength where 
the weight was most heavy, assigned to each his 
post, indicating to him the motion he was to make; 
he himself then placed his white and delicate hand 
under the enormous mass and gave the signal. 
And the mass of timber was raised without effort 
and as if by a miracle. 

Then turning towards the foreman, he said to 
him : “ You see that in association no one is weak; 
for he who can do the least with his hands can 
sometimes do the most by his advice. It is the co- 
operation of small efforts that determines the 
greatest movement; and in order that a small 
force may become a power, it is only necessary to 
put it in its true place, so that it may act in har- 
mony with all the other forces.” 

Then the workmen said to him: “You are 
very young; and we see that you are already 
passed master in our trade.” 

Jesus said to them: “ I am an apprentice car- 
penter; but I speak to you in the name of supreme 
wisdom, which is master in all the arts and in all 
the sciences. When Noah caused to be built the 
ark, which was to preserve the seeds of a new 
world, he consulted that supreme wisdom, and by 


4 6 THE LAST INCARNATION 

it directed the cooperation of his workmen in the 
construction of that wonderful vessel. 

“ But the workmen who had labored in the 
building of the ark did not enter it, and perished 
in the deluge, because they obeyed the man, and 
did not penetrate the divine thought. Let it not 
be so with you, for I tell you in truth, that you are 
all called to the building of a new ark. Be, there- 
fore, intelligent workmen; and be careful to pro- 
vide a place for yourselves and for your children 
in the great social vessel, in order that you may 
not perish when the great storm shall come.” 

The workmen said to him, “ Of what storm 
do you speak? ” 

Jesus answered them : “ When the wind blows, 
it must raise, or it must carry away, or it must 
overturn everything that opposes its passage. If 
it is thrown back upon the waters, it will upturn 
the mass of the waters, and if it descends in a 
whirlwind upon the earth, it will uproot the trees. 

“ The spirit of God, the spirit of intelligence 
and of love, is like an impetuous wind, which 
blows from the east even to the west. It drives 
before it the clouds of error, shakes the rocks of 
pride which resist it, and uproots the old beliefs. 
And those who have thought they could usurp the 
kingdom of heaven, try to repel it and to drive 
it back upon the suffering multitudes, as upon the 
surface of the waters. This is why you must 


THE APPRENTICE CARPENTER 47 

hasten to erect the edifice of salvation, in order 
that the rising of the waters may not carry you 
away.” 

Then the workmen understood his words; and 
some became pensive, others looked at him with 
astonishment, while others murmured within them- 
selves, saying, “ This young boy is sent here to 
make us talk,” and they mistrusted him. 

But Jesus, taking an ax, began to work with 
them; and everything that he did was of an ad- 
mirable precision. 

Then he said to them: “ If any one requests 
you to labor for the salvation of your brothers, 
and does not at the same time put his hand to the 
work, distrust that man. True love for the peo- 
ple is proved less by words than by deeds. And 
how will they believe that a man feels for their 
sufferings, unless he suffers with them? Listen 
to the advice of those who give you examples, and 
do not allow yourselves to be enervated and dis- 
couraged in the present, by thoughts of the future: 
the future will be the son of the present, and to- 
morrow will gather what you sow to-day. 

“ But take care that envy, or foolish pride, or 
other bad passions, do not make you despise the 
advice of those who love you. Recollect what 
happened to the people who allowed Jesus to be 
crucified. Know that the spirit of Jesus is always 
upon the earth, and that often, when you least 


48 THE LAST INCARNATION 

expect him, he approaches you. Do not say, What 
right has such a one to teach us? It is as if you 
said, What right has he to love us? 

“ Receive truth from love of the truth itself, 
and be not jealous of him who devotes himself 
to tell it to you. Listen not to those who seek 
to depreciate his words, by accusing his person, for 
the weaknesses of man belong to man, but the 
word of truth belongs to God. And you must 
know that it is so much the more divine, because 
it uses the voice of a more imperfect being, in 
order that you may not attach yourself to the man 
who speaks, but only to the truth which he tells 
you.” 

The men of the people, on hearing these words, 
were seized with respect; and, looking upon him 
who spoke to them, it seemed to them that they 
had already seen him before. Each of them 
found in him some resemblance to those whom 
he had loved, and whose affection had rendered 
his life less bitter. To some, it was the remem- 
brance of a mother; to others, it was the image 
of a son, or of a brother, who was no longer in 
this world; all felt their hearts moved, and cour- 
age and hope were reawakened in their souls. 

Jesus worked with them until their dinner-hour, 
and, as they rested themselves to eat, he remarked 
that some had more, the others less; and he said 
to them, “ Do you know how the Christ for- 


THE APPRENTICE CARPENTER 49 

merly multiplied the loaves to satisfy the people 
in the desert?” They answered him, “No; 
and we do not believe in that miracle, because it 
appears to us impossible.” 

Jesus said to them: “ Put together in common 
all that you have brought for your dinner, in order 
that each may have the advantage of what be- 
longs to all; and you will see that your provisions 
will be multiplied, for the bread of fraternal com- 
munion will be the bond of association, and the 
seed of future prosperity. And each of you will 
feel that he ought not to be a burden to the others, 
and you will be like the earth which receives the 
grain that is given to it, to render it back a hun- 
dred fold.” Then, having blessed the bread, he 
broke it, and distributed it among them: and he 
did the same with the other provisions. And he 
said to them: “ Learn what humanity can do by 
the labor of its hands.” 

Then each offered from his share to his breth- 
ren, and no one wished to receive more than he 
could give in return; seeing which, Jesus said to 
them, “ The kingdom of God is not far from 
you.” And he left them. 

“Will you come back?” cried the workmen. 
“ Yes,” replied he; “ if you do as I have told you, 
you will soon see me again in the midst of you.” 

And he left them in their astonishment, not dar- 
ing to communicate their thoughts to each other; 


50 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


and several said, “ If he were not so young, 
we should think the Christ had again come among 
us.” Because they did not reflect that the spirit 
of the Christ is immortal, and cannot grow old. 


FIFTH LEGEND 


THE CHILDREN OF SOLOMON 

A FTER that, the Christ took the dress 
and the figure of a workman, and, 
carrying his tools on his back and a 
long cane in his hand, he journeyed. 
Now, two workmen, of those who are called 
Companions of the Devoir, were traveling in the 
same direction. They came near him, and made 
to him the signs of fraternity, to which Jesus re- 
plied only by the sign of the cross. The compan- 
ions began to laugh and to mock at him; they 
even prepared to maltreat him, and they asked 
him in a threatening tone, what he meant by what 
he had just done. 

Jesus answered them: “ You made to me the 
sign of the children of Solomon, and I reply to 
you by the sign of him who was greater than Solo- 
mon. The cross is the square, multiplied and 
rendered universal. It is the symbol of equality 
before God, and of the fraternity of all. Solo- 
mon built only a temple of stone; and the Christ 
constructed universal society, that living temple 
which cements fraternity. 

51 


52 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


“ Why do you ask me to what devoir (duty) 

I belong? There is but one duty for all the chil- 
dren of the Father: it is to assist each other mu- 
tually, and to love each other, as the Father who 
is in heaven watches over them all and loves 
them.” 

The workmen replied: “We do not like the 
sign of the cross, and no longer believe in the 
virtue which was formerly attributed to it; for 
bad priests have made of it their sign, and have 
abused it while they taught superstition and false- 
hood.” 

Jesus said to them: “If brigands, while en- 
deavoring to kill you, should pronounce the name 
of your mother, would that be a reason for no 
longer loving your mother? The priests and the 
pharisees used the cross to put the Christ to death, 
and their successors have wished still to use it 
for the execution of the people whom the Christ 
came to save. But the Christ, in triumphing over 
the world by the cross, made the very instrument 
of his execution a sign of deliverance and salva- 
tion; and that sign should cause bad priests and 
bad kings to tremble; for it is the sign of rallying 
for those whom the glorious death of the Christ, 
their brother, has rendered free. 

“ Brothers, do not renounce the cross; for it is 
by it that you will be strong, and that you will con- 
quer.” 


CHILDREN OF SOLOMON 


53 

“ Do you then despise the square of Solomon? ” 
asked the Companions of the Devoir. 

“ The square of Solomon is the symbol of a rel- 
ative equality, and its branches embrace only one 
side of the humanitary edifice; unite two squares 
together, so that one may open its branches to the 
side of the east and the other to the side of the 
west, and you will therewith form a cross.” 

The two companions, who were men of sense, 
admired Jesus in their hearts, saying to him: 
“ We like to hear you. You are wiser than we, 
and you must teach us.” 

Jesus asked them, “ What is your religion? ” 

“ My parents were Protestants,” said the first. 

“ Mine were Catholics,” said the other; “but 
I never go to church.” 

“ Do you know what the words Catholic 
Church mean?” asked the Christ. And as they 
were embarrassed for an answer, he added: 
“ They mean universal association. This is what 
the Christ intended to introduce upon the earth, 
and the hierarchical society of the priests was only 
an imperfect model of the true universal Church. 
The error of the priests has been in wishing to 
render immutable and eternal that which was only 
transitory. They have built for themselves alone 
a house according to the plans of the Christian 
architecture, and they have not reflected that the 
Church should be the house of the whole of hu- 


54 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


manity. This is why their house will be left to 
them, and they will die in it alone and deserted, 
while humanity will construct the great universal 
temple, of which Solomon’s was formerly the first 
figure. 

“ The priests, in the primitive Church, were 
only the wise men and the elders to whom the peo- 
ple confided the presidency of their assemblages. 
Are there no wise men among you? and is there 
any necessity for you to seek the fathers of the 
people out of the ranks of the people? 

“ Reflect that the ministry of mediation be- 
tween God and man is the work of the most per- 
fect devotedness. If there be among you a man 
who loves truth more than life, and his brothers 
more than himself, that man is worthy to preside 
over you; and it is he who should explain to you 
the things that are of God. 

u For he knows enough about religion, who 
knows how to love good and truth above all 
things, and his neighbor more than himself. Re- 
ligion was not given for the priests, but for the 
people; and the people are not the servants of the 
priests, but, on the contrary, it is the priests who 
should be the servants of the people.” 

Then the companions replied to Jesus : “ Your 

words please us, however ,new and singular they 
may be: but we no longer wish to have priests 


CHILDREN OF SOLOMON 55 

among us: for their very name excites in us ab- 
horrence and disgust.” 

Jesus said to them: “Those whom you hate 
on account of their name call themselves priests 
and are so no longer, for they have been punished 
wherein they have sinned. They wished to con- 
ceal the spirit of wisdom contained in the symbols 
of the doctrine, and the spirit of wisdom has de- 
parted from them. They wished to keep the peo- 
ple in ignorance and superstition, and now they 
are themselves more ignorant and more supersti- 
tious than the lowest among the people. They 
have renounced loving and being loved in order to 
make themselves feared, and now they are no 
longer feared and they are not loved. 

“ Remember what the Christ said when speak- 
ing of the doctors of the ancient synagogue : 
‘ The pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, do therefore 
what they teach you, but do not imitate their 
works ; for they say and do not.’ ” 

One of the workmen then said: “Why need 
we go and hear hypocrites and liars? we much 
prefer to be taught by those who believe what they 
say, and who practice what they teach.” 

Then Jesus: “That is a good thought, but 
know that the first Christians continued to respect 
the old temple, even while working for the con- 
struction of the new Church. This is why I say 


56 THE LAST INCARNATION 

to you : Do not hate the pharisees and the doctors 
of the Catholic Church; leave them to their im- 
potence; they can no longer do you either good 
or harm, because they have no longer either intelli- 
gence or love. 

“ This is why I say to you still further: Build 
up the new society, the great universal associa- 
tion, the communion of all with all, and of all with 
each. Let those among you who have intelli- 
gence and devotedness be the fathers and the 
elders, to teach, to direct and to console; and you 
will thus institute a new priesthood. 

“ It is not years which make a man old in wis- 
dom, it is thoughts and works. And he who has 
thought most wisely and acted most justly, he has 
lived the longest. Be therefore young men when 
action is required, and old men when advice is 
needed.” 

After these words, Jesus said no more and con- 
tinued walking with them. Now, the two com- 
panions also kept a profound silence and asked 
themselves : “ Whence has this man so much 

knowledge and wisdom? For he speaks to us 
with authority, and seems so certain of what he 
says that we are compelled to believe him.” 

Then two other journeymen, belonging to an- 
other profession, came by the same road and were 
about to pass the three travelers. Those who 
walked with Jesus said to him: “We shall be 


CHILDREN OF SOLOMON 


57 


obliged to fight; they are but two and we are three, 
but you were not with us, and you can stand 
aside.” 

Jesus said to them: “ Why should you fight? 
Are those men enemies or malefactors? It seems 
to me that they are honest workmen like your- 
selves. What! because they are of one trade and 
you of another, must you rend each other like 
furious beasts ! 

“ If the carpenter exterminates the stone cutter, 
how can he himself live? Does not the carpen- 
ter’s work support and strengthen the stones of 
a building? If he who makes garments triumphs 
over him who makes shoes, how shall he be shod? 
and if it is the shoemaker who kills the tailor, how 
shall he be clothed? 

“ You have all need, each of the other; and you 
hate each other only because you are members of 
separate societies ; unite your societies into a single 
one, instead of fighting, and cause universal union 
to take the place of separate associations.” 

As Jesus was still speaking, the two new comers 
drew near, but they were not willing to listen any 
longer, and raised their sticks to commence the 
attack. Then the two companions of the Christ 
stood on their defense, but Jesus, placing himself 
between them, stretched out his arms and said to 
them: “ You shall not fight, or you must strike 
me; for you are brothers; and if I cannot prevent 


58 THE LAST INCARNATION 

you from doing harm I prefer to be your victim 
rather than your accomplice.” 

“ Stand aside ! stand aside ! ” cried the four 
journeymen, brandishing their canes; and as he 
did not stand aside, they struck, and the blood 
flowed down the face of the Christ. 

At this sight a sudden stupor paralyzed the 
arms of the combatants; the head of the wounded 
man seemed to be surrounded by a glory; he cast 
upon them a sad glance which penetrated to their 
very heart, and said, as he took his blood in his 
hands and showed it to them: “How many 
times then shall I be obliged to die for you? ” 

Then under the fresh blood which they had 
caused to flow, the journeymen recognized the an- 
cient cicatrices, and the Christ, being transfigured 
before their eyes, appeared to them under the 
lamentable form of the Ecce Homo. 

They fell upon their knees; and the Christ, rais- 
ing his eyes towards Heaven, repeated once again, 
his sublime prayer: “Father, forgive them for 
they know not what they do.” 

Then he took their hands and joined them to- 
gether, saying to them: “ Instead of being two 
on one side and two on the other, be four together : 
you will be four times as strong! Meditate well 
upon this saying, and if you are intelligent, under- 
stand it.” Then, having blessed them, he dis- 
appeared from their eyes. 


CHILDREN OF SOLOMON 


59 


Then the four journeymen swore not to sepa- 
rate before they had laid the foundations of 
universal union. And they promised to help each 
other until death, consecrating their entire life 
to form a union between the children of Solomon, 
of Hiram and of the other ancient architects of 
the temple, in order to induce them to work all 
together for universal association, and for the 
ultimate formation of the great family of the 
children of the Christ. 




















I 
























SIXTH LEGEND 


THE DAUGHTERS OF MAGDALEN 

S HORTLY after this, the Christ remem- 
bered the woman of Samaria and Mag- 
dalen the sinner, to whom many sins were 
forgiven because she had loved much. 
And he, who had not disdained to descend even 
into hell, to deliver the souls of those whom he 
had ransomed, went in the evening through the 
streets of the great city, seeking the poor sinning 
women. 

And on seeing them wander about by the light 
of the lamps, with a smile on their lips and death 
in their heart, with flowers on their brow and their 
feet in the mud, he wept, thinking of Mary. And 
he looked at them with ineffable sadness, at the 
thought that each of those unfortunates had a soul 
and a heart. 

One of them having approached him, he looked 
at her sorrowfully and said, “ My daughter, 
what do you desire of me? ” 

“ That thou wouldst forgive me,” replied she; 
for she had recognized him. 

Jesus said to her: “ You know me because you 


6 2 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


have suffered much: poor child, what can I do 
for you? I can forgive you, but how can I en- 
able you to forgive yourself? Did not my father 
create you to live pure and to become a mother? 
How then have you fallen into this horribly abject 
condition ? ” 

“ Because I could no longer live, and because 
I had not strength enough to die,” replied the 
poor woman, weeping. 

“ And in order to live you have condemned 
yourself to die every day,” said Jesus to her; 
“what then did you find so desirable in life?” 

“ Master,” returned she, “ when men pay me 
that they may outrage me, it is not I who am 
guilty of the evil which they do to me; but if I 
had laid violent hands on myself, I should have 
been obliged to answer before God for the crime 
of my death.” 

“ Woman, you reason justly,” said Jesus. 
“ You were weak, and society did not support you : 
therefore you are a living accusation against it, 
and each of your humiliations shall be punished 
as a homicide. For each of those men who think 
they can possess you for a vile price, has had a 
mother; and he does not reflect that Heaven had 
destined you also to be a mother. He has per- 
haps had a sister, and he does not reflect that you 
might be his sister. Sometimes he has even a 
betrothed; and he does not ask himself what he 


DAUGHTERS OF MAGDALEN 63 

would suffer if any one should thus degrade his 
betrothed. For every woman is a betrothed of 
humanity; and to each of them had God destined 
a husband. 

“ Withdraw therefore from me, O my poor 
child ! for my presence does you harm and covers 
you with shame: you would wish to love me and 
you dare not look upon me, because I am the pure 
man and you are the poor degraded woman. 

“ No, do not look at me, poor humiliated 
woman; but look at my image nailed to the cross, 
and hope. For I do not break the bruised reed, 
and I do not tread under foot the still smoking 
flax. 

“ The world despises you, because it has made 
you impure, and it despised me because I was pure. 
You see then that its judgments are iniquitous, 
and that they ought not to drive you to despair. 

“ Poor creature ! who, because you were weak, 
suffer now what would terrify the strongest 
natures! Do not fear my reproaches; I do not 
wish to add them to the regrets of your heart. 
The world has broken you, that is why I will have 
pity on you. When I was expiring on the cross, 
I saw at my feet Magdalen the sinner; and I was 
happy to die for her. For I love those whom the 
world abandons, and I bless those whom it out- 
rages. 

u Depart, my daughter; and enclose your sor- 


6 4 THE LAST INCARNATION 

row in your soul, like a hope. Weep inwardly, 
when the sad necessities of your life compel you 
to smile ; for you have no chastity henceforth but 
in the tears of your heart. 

“ Never prostitute your soul, in order that your 
body may be purified by destruction; and that the 
remembrance of your fall may perish with your 
perishable form in the forgetfulness of the grave. 
The soul is immortal, and its sorrowful aspira- 
tions after virtue will live with it; the body is 
mortal, and the faults which come from it and are 
attached to it will go with it into death. 

“ Poor angel fallen into hell, be not there- 
fore tired with looking towards heaven, and do 
not despair of your salvation; for those who have 
destroyed you are more criminal than you : and 
you would have a right to cry out for vengeance 
against them.” 

“ I forgive them,” replied the woman; “ for if 
they were better they would be happier; and how 
could they have been good to me, when they do 
not yet know how to be good to themselves? ” 

“ Go in peace, my daughter, and hope for your 
deliverance,” then said the Christ. “You have 
not been virtuous, and perhaps that is the world’s 
fault more than your own; but you are good, and 
that belongs to your heart and the world cannot 
take it from you. God will forgive you as you 
forgive those who have injured you. Be coura- 


DAUGHTERS OF MAGDALEN 65 

geous then and try to free yourself from vice. 
Let no labor repel you, for you have suffered 
something still more severe: let no effort be too 
great for you; for you have needed many efforts 
to resign yourself to your abject condition. 

“ Courage ! my daughter, rise up and hope ! let 
you heart be pure in the first place: form again 
a virginity in your soul and God will not desert 
you. 

“ The world will never forgive you, because, 
being more criminal than you, it has neither the 
right nor the generosity of forgiveness. But God 
will love you as a father loves his prodigal son, 
and your very faults, which repentance will make 
eternal sources of sorrow for you, will become for 
you expiatory suffering, and claims to the crown 
of martyrdom.” 

Having said these words, the Christ departed, 
for the poor woman sobbed and could no longer 
listen to him. 

Jesus afterwards passed before other women 
who did not recognize him, and to whom he did 
not speak, because they were brutified by vice and 
contented in their abjectness, from love of dis- 
order and hatred of good. He looked upon them 
as diseased persons fallen into delirium and 
prayed silently for them. 

He saw others whose life was a continued 
drunkenness, and who intoxicated themselves in 


66 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


order to forget; and he compared them to those 
unfortunates who have lost their reason; but he 
pitied them the more because their madness was 
voluntary. 

But he cursed none of those women, because 
they were all unhappy. He pitied them, on the 
contrary, and he loved them, because no one loves 
them. 

But there were men who passed in the streets 
and who insulted those unfortunates. Jesus ap- 
proached them and said to them: “ You doubt- 
less are modest, since you insult these women who 
have lost their modesty. You doubtless know the 
sanctity of love, since you insult these women who 
sell their deplorable complaisance. You doubt- 
less respect the sex of your mother and of her 
who is or who will be the mother of your children, 
since you thus despise these poor women, who 
have lost all their maternal dignity.” 

“What is that to you?” replied those men 
rudely. “ We do what pleases us; go your ways. 
Are you the defender of these creatures? ” 

Jesus said to them: “If these creatures are 
despicable, what name shall be given to you, to 
you who degrade them ? For it is of your brutality 
that they are made the servants; and if there 
were no men like you, there would be no women 
like them. 

“ Now, you know that, according to the law of 


DAUGHTERS OF MAGDALEN 67 


nature, the husband is the head of the conjugal 
society, and that he answers before men even for 
the disorders of his wife. 

“ Now, I tell you that, before God, the legiti- 
mate wife of the debauchee is the prostitute, and 
that he ought to be branded before men with all 
the disorders of her whom he habitually makes his 
companion. 

“ Now as each man who unites himself inti- 
mately with a woman, makes but one with her, 
when you outrage these poor creatures, your in- 
sults fall back upon yourselves and you alone de- 
serve them.” 

On hearing this discourse, those men were 
filled with confusion and bit their tongues with 
anger, but no one of them dared to insult or 
threaten Jesus, for he spoke boldly to them, and 
those who can insult women are naturally cowards. 

They murmured among themselves and stam- 
mered insults and rude railleries in a low voice. 
But Jesus turned his back upon them and departed. 
And they did not suspect who it was that had just 
spoken to them. 

























/ 














SEVENTH LEGEND 

THE CONSPIRATORS 

A T that time Jesus wished to converse 
with those who said they were devoted 
to the redemption of the people. But 
before manifesting himself to them, he 
wished to know their most secret thoughts; and 
making himself present to them by the virtue of 
his spirit, he listened to the words of their hearts. 

He especially interrogated those who should be 
the ministers of the word, the men whose writings 
are multiplied every day like the leaves of the 
trees, and he sought for a belief and a thought at 
the bottom of the heart of those men. He saw 
them put on and put off their maxims like a livery, 
defend and attack the same thing by turns with the 
same indifference, for to the greater number 
among them nothing was true and nothing was 
false. 

He saw the fiercest defenders of the popular 
cause, full of contempt for the people; and burning 
with a low envy which made them the enemies of 
the great, because they themselves thirsted for 
riches and greatness. He saw them write upon 
69 


7 o 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


their banner names which they themselves de- 
spised. For these knew themselves too well to 
have any confidence in each other, and they no 
longer believed even in themselves, for they 
doubted everything, having lost faith and not hav- 
ing found science: as some must indeed reign and 
others obey, they protested against obedience in 
the hope of reigning, and each helped the other, 
in order to secure by his means ; but they detested 
each other, and were all jealous of each other in 
the depths of their heart. 

Jesus saw them, understood them, and did not 
go near to speak to them or to manifest himself 
to them; for those unfortunates could neither see 
nor hear him. 

Then having turned away his eyes, he sought 
the men of the people who were assembled in 
secret like the Christians in the times of the Cat- 
acombs; there at least he saw noble hearts and 
generous aspirations, but nowhere was there any 
agreement about the choice or the employment 
of means, because the flock of the future had not 
yet found its shepherds. The greatest confusion 
prevailed in ideas: and the wills, instead of being 
united, were divided more and more, and opposed 
mutual obstacles; each one wished to bring for- 
ward his system, and the systems destroyed each 
other; the time of faith and of common belief 
seemed to be forever passed, and no fixed durable 


THE CONSPIRATORS 


7i 


light as yet replaced the extinguished faith; thus 
the natural heat of souls destroyed them without 
producing brightness, and was exhausted without 
being communicated to other souls which were 
cold and which languished in darkness. 

Jesus assumed the appearance of a man of the 
people, and entered at evening into a low hall 
where were assembled some writers and working- 
men, who were talking of reform without coming 
to any understanding, because the emissaries of 
the political parties agitated them in a contrary 
condition. 

Jesus then rose in the midst and said to them: 
“ For what purpose have you come here? Have 
you come to dispute about words which you do not 
understand, and to listen to men who seek to 
glorify themselves? Have you come to build up 
or to destroy? To unite or to divide? To delib- 
erate or to dispute? 

“ Mistrust those men who, under pretext of 
zeal for your interests, bring to you only bitter 
recriminations; those who speculate upon prin- 
ciples in favor of such or such a name; those who 
address themselves only to hateful and jealous pas- 
sions. Banish from among you those who speak 
incessantly of themselves and who underhandedly 
calumniate your friends and your defenders.” 

At these words, there was a great tumult in 
the assembly; a part of those who were there 


72 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


shouted in order to drown the voice of the Christ, 
and calling him traitor and false brother, they 
wished to drive him out. 

Then Jesus said: “ Bad passions betray them- 
selves. Let the men of good faith, the friends 
of good order be silent and remain calm; they 
will be recognized by this sign, and the meeting 
will be purified.” 

More than half the assembly then seated them- 
selves and kept silence; while the agitators, furi- 
ous at seeing themselves thus recognized, burst 
out into threats and insults. Jesus remained 
seated in the midst of the honest workmen, who 
kept calm and silent like him, and they preserved 
a deep silence. Seeing which, those men who 
were violent and of bad faith, left the assembly, 

Then Jesus said to those who remained: 
“ Brothers, when the first Christians met in secret 
assemblages, it was not to dispute, but to com- 
mune together in the spirit of fraternity and of 
justice. You suffer greatly, I knew; society is 
harsh and unjust towards you, I know that also; 
but you form a part of society. Be good to- 
wards each other, and society will be less harsh; 
be yourselves just in the first place, and injustice 
will be diminished. Know that disorder always 
produces a greater disorder, and that evil never 
remedies evil. 

“ Do you know why the wicked rich oppress 


THE CONSPIRATORS 


73 


you? It is because they do not recognize you as 
their brothers, having had the misfortune to for- 
get God and the teachings of the Christ. They 
are unjust, because they have no other moral law 
than their avarice and their pride: beware there- 
fore of pride and avarice; for these vices pro- 
duce in their conflicts only the alternations of 
tyranny and slavery. In order to be free, you 
must first be liberated from all the bad passions 
which enslave the heart and deprave the under- 
standing. Do not conspire in darkness against 
men; conspire in broad daylight against vice. 

“ Exercise a fraternal watchfulness over each 
other; reprimand in your meetings the intemper- 
ate, the brutal, and the idle; give public eulogiums 
to labor, to devotedness, and to correct morals. 
The people will be strong when they are good and 
just. Let them cease to be minors, and their 
guardian will be compelled to render his accounts 
to them. Lions are not harnessed to the cart, 
and eagles are not fed in the poultry yard with 
domestic fowls. 

“ But so long as you are neither wise enough 
nor strong enough to reign yourselves, obey your 
kings and your chiefs, and pray to God that he 
will preserve them for you, because the people 
always suffer in revolutions and never gain by a 
change of masters.” 

The workmen, hearing this, murmured among 


74 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


themselves and said, “ Is not this man an emis- 
sary of the government?” And they began to 
retire, one after the other. 

Jesus, continuing his discourse, said to them: 
“ How can you be free, if you know not how to 
discern the true from the false, and the good 
from the evil? How can you get out of slavery, 
if you calumniate those who love you, and if you 
refuse to hear those who tell you the truth? 

“ Because the government is in fact stronger 
than you, and because I advise you not to crush 
yourselves by rushing against it, you say that I 
am an emissary of your enemies! And when I 
trace out for you the path by which you can 
attain the royalty of free men, you accuse me of 
being a servant of the government! You see 
well that you are not yet in a condition to reign, 
for you wish to be flattered and not to be taught: 
you have the usual weakness of tyrants.” 

When the Christ had made an end of speaking, 
he looked around him, and saw that all had de- 
parted, excepting three young men, who listened 
to him with respect. 

Jesus said to them: “You are then the only 
ones who have understood me? Well, go now 
and announce to your brethren what you have 
heard, and do not despair of the salvation of 
humanity. 

“ First free the world which is in yourselves; 


THE CONSPIRATORS 


75 


be men, and you will be free! For all slavery 
is voluntary. No one can degrade those who 
are not willing to be degraded. God himself, 
with all his power, could not compel the will of a 
little child.” 

“We wish to be free!” then said the three 
young men, with energy. 

“ Well, persevere in that will, and you shall 
be more than kings,” replied Jesus. 

And they separated. 


EIGHTH LEGEND 


THE NEW ADULTEROUS WOMAN 

A T that time Jesus clothed himself with 
all the majesty of the perfect man; and 
as he had formerly awaited the Samar- 
itan women at the edge of Jacob’s well, 
so he went and seated himself in a retired spot 
of a public garden. 

Now, a woman who had seen him pass had 
followed him at a distance, and she approached 
him in order to see if he would not speak to her; 
but Jesus did not even look at her. 

Now, that woman was deeply agitated in her 
heart, and could not turn away her eyes from 
that radiant figure. She recognized the Christ 
because she had seen him in all her dreams, and 
she ardently desired that he would look at her; 
but she did not dare to speak to him the first, 
because she feared his contempt. 

Nevertheless the Lord had pity on the anguish 
of the woman, and praying inwardly to his Father, 
he said: “O my God! deliver women from 
adultery, in order that the generations may no 
longer be poisoned at their source! O my God! 
77 


7 8 THE LAST INCARNATION 

have pity on the tears of my mother, who prays 
for the liberation of mothers, and restore chastity 
to this corrupted world ! ” 

Then, addressing the woman, with a gentle and 
grave countenance, he asked her if she wished to 
speak to him. 

The woman replied, blushing, that she had 
nothing to say to him; but she remained near him, 
confused, trembling, and yet charmed at having 
heard his voice. 

“ Well, I, my daughter, have something to say 
to you,” said the Savior; “ sit down by my side.” 

“ I cannot,” said the woman, “ for I fear that 
my husband may see me.” 

“ Then you are doing something wrong? ” 
asked Jesus. 

“ Perhaps so,” replied the woman, “ and yet 
it seems to me that I have confidence in you, and 
the feeling which retains me by your side in spite 
of myself is very pure. I do not think I have 
ever seen you before, and already it seems to me 
that I have known you for a long while, and that 
you have always been good to me. I feel no 
shame at letting you see the condition of my 
heart. I only fear your contempt, for I am the 
wife of another.” 

“ And that other, have you loved him? ” asked 
Jesus. 


NEW ADULTEROUS WOMAN 79 

“ Never,” replied the woman, casting down her 
eyes. 

“ And how could you promise fidelity to him 
whom you did not love? For fidelity is only the 
voluntary guarantee of a mutual love. You 
therefore deceived a man who loved you, by pre- 
tending to give to him that which was not yours, 
and which could never be his? ” 

“ He himself did not love me,” again mur- 
mured the woman. “ He married me for the 
sake of the money which my parents gave him 
with me, in exchange for his name and his credit.” 

“And thus you became adulterous?” said the 
Christ, looking at her. 

“ Oh ! no, never ! ” returned she earnestly. 
“ To-day is the first time that an invincible at- 
traction has made me speak with freedom to an- 
other man ; but now, were it not for the confidence 
and the respect with which your countenance in- 
spires me, I should not have approached you. I 
knew well that you would despise me,” added 
she, bowing her head, and the tears flowed from 
her eyes. 

“ Woman,” said the Christ to her, u you are 
not culpable for having loved, but indeed for hav- 
ing given yourself to him whom you did not love. 
Know that God had betrothed you from your 
birth by the attractions which he placed in the 


8o 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


depths of your heart. He whom you were to 
love, he whom you dreamt of, he whose image I 
recall to you, he alone was your true husband, 
and during his absence you were sold like a slave, 
and you contracted an adulterous alliance with 
another. 

“ Do you no longer remember the words of 
the Christ? The man shall forget his father and 
his mother and shall cleave unto his wife. This 
means that conjugal affection shall be more tender 
than filial love, and shall prevail over all the af- 
fections. For God from the beginning has pre- 
destined man and woman to be united. What 
God has joined together, let man never put 
asunder ! 

“ But tell me, woman : is it by bargains of traffic 
and of avarice that God unites wills, and do you 
believe that the demon of riches can accomplish 
the work of holy and legitimate love? Does 
not man separate what God wishes to unite, when 
he sells his daughters and when he buys a wife? 

“ I do not reproach you, my daughter, for you 
were not free, and according to the laws which 
they have made, you were compelled to obey. 
Resistance would have been death to you; and 
all souls have not the courage of martyrdom. 

“ Do not curse your parents, but pray God to 
forgive them, for they prostituted you to their 
interest and their pride. 


NEW ADULTEROUS WOMAN 81 


“ Know only that on the day when what men 
call your marriage was accomplished, the angels 
of heaven veiled themselves with their wings and 
wept over you, for you had become an adulterous 
woman. You were unfaithful to the sweet dream 
of your heart; you abjured the alliance hidden in 
your soul; you outraged divine maternity.” 

“ Spare me ! ” said the woman in a supplicating 
voice, and clasping her hands. 

“ Woman,” returned Jesus, “ I have already 
told you : it is not I who accuse you; it is you who 
might accuse the world. 

“ For all those who consent to evil commit 
evil, and all those who are the slaves of riches; 
all those who esteem gold more than liberty and 
more than love; all those who are indignant at 
this venality of the world, and who do not protest 
loudly against the universal corruption ; those who 
do not think of it and who are satisfied with 
laughing at it — all these are the accomplices of 
him who bought you and of those who sold you. 

“ This is why, if no one formerly had the right 
to cast the first stone at the unfaithful woman, 
because all had sinned, at this day the woman 
whom they have made adulterous can rise up be- 
fore the throne of God and accuse them in her 
turn with sobs and tears. And I tell you in truth 
that each of her tears will be equal in value to 
a drop of the blood of the Redemption, and that 


82 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


her sobs will impose silence before God on the 
clamors of hell ! ” 

Then he added in a gentler voice : “ Woman, 

the human word is sacred as the divine word, and 
the slave who has sold himself has no longer the 
right to flee; otherwise he would be perjured and 
a robber. Let the faithfulness of your word ex- 
piate the unfaithfulness of your heart. 

“ Do not reproach yourself for loving me : you 
may do so, for soon you will see me no longer, 
and you will seek me in your dreams. 

“ I am the husband of isolated souls; I am the 
man of the future! 

“ It is I who am the betrothed of virgins, and 
the consoler of widows! 

“ I am the husband promised by the celestial 
poetry of Solomon to the woman purified by trial 
and freed by sorrow! 

“ Let us love each other, poor slave ! and be 
resigned while awaiting your freedom; but if you 
have daughters, never sell them, and do not sacri- 
fice them to alliances which heaven looks upon 
with horror. 

“ Labor for the destruction of sin, in order 
that God may forgive your fault; and if you wish 
again to see my image, in order to encourage you 
to suffer — look upon the cross.” 

At this last word, the woman was seized with 
affright, and, raising her eyes, she saw no one. 


NEW ADULTEROUS WOMAN 83 

She fell upon her knees, by the side of the 
bench where she had seen the Savior seated, and 
clasping her hands, she wept bitterly. 

Several men then approached without her per- 
ceiving them : it was her husband, who was look- 
ing for her, accompanied by several witnesses, 
and who said to them, pointing at her: “You 
see that she has become crazy; you will testify 
for me.” 

Then they seized her, and she allowed herself 
to be led away without understanding what they 
wished; but when she saw that her husband was 
about to put her in confinement, in order to get 
rid of her, she thought that she would, at least, be 
delivered from adultery and prostitution : she pre- 
ferred to be the victim of that man, rather than 
to continue his accomplice, and when she was 
questioned, she replied that she had seen the 
Christ, and related all that the Savior had said 
to her. Then the physicians and the judges de- 
cided that she had lost her reason, and she was 
shut up in a hospital for the insane. There she 
consoled herself by thinking that she should not 
be a mother, and that she should bring no daugh- 
ters into the world: she was buried alive in that 
terrible tomb, and of all that had belonged to her, 
she asked only for her mother’s crucifix. 







NINTH LEGEND 


THE HOUSE OF THE INSANE 

A T that time Jesus, wishing to compel 
the insanity of the age to condemn it- 
self by declaring its aversion to wis- 
dom, entered into a house where a 
large number of persons were assembled, and, 
raising his voice, he spoke thus to them : 

“ For what purpose have you come together 
in this house, when your minds are divided, and 
when your hearts separate more and more from 
each other? Why do you salute each other with 
a gracious countenance, when, at the bottom of 
your heart, you desire each other’s death? ” 

And, as they murmured at these words, Jesus 
added : “ Who is there among you that would 

not take the fortune and the dignities of another, 
if he could do so with impunity? Now, to wish 
to strip one’s brother of that which makes his 
life, is not this to desire his death? 

“What do you seek with so much trouble? 
What do you conceal with so much care? What 
do you desire as the reward of so many efforts? 
You wear out your life, you brutalize your soul, 
85 


86 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


you destroy your heart, to attain an object which 
you yourselves do not understand. You seek 
happiness at the expense of happiness; you sacri- 
fice your life to live; you devour your entrails to 
appease your hunger. 

“Your whole life is a lie; you voluntarily im- 
prison yourselves in constraint and ennui ; you sell 
your eternity to buy death, and you resemble the 
sick man in delirium, who dreams of journeys or 
of pleasures during the exhaustion of his agony., 

“ What good does it do you to gain the universe 
while you lose your soul? Is a corpse happy, 
then, upon a throne? and when you have no 
longer either belief or love, of what use to you 
is the homage of men whom you despise, and the 
attentions of those poor women whom you do 
not love and who do not love you? 

“ Is not vainglory a derision to him who has 
raised himself by crawling? and can he believe 
himself superior to those who debase themselves 
to-day as he debased himself yesterday? What 
can be done with riches by the man who has killed 
his heart, and reduced himself to animal life? 
Are not the necessities of animals limited, and 
does not every excess carry with it its lassitude 
and its punishment? 

“ Go, then, servants of this world, sacrifice 
yourselves for this ungrateful master; abjure 
everything that makes the joy of the soul; re- 


HOUSE OF THE INSANE 


87 


nounce everything that makes the life of the heart; 
then, when you shall be such as you must be to 
reign over it, you will yourselves reject with dis- 
gust what it will have left you of corpse-like ex- 
istence, and extinction will be your last hope.” 

As Jesus spoke thus, the master of the house 
sent for his servants to drive him out; “ for,” 
said he, “ a crazy man has entered our saloon, and 
his craziness being very sad, he must be led away, 
and placed in the hands of the police, in order 
that he may be confined in a house of the insane.” 

But Jesus, understanding their thoughts, said 
to them: “You send me to the house of the 
insane, and I leave you in your own house. 

“ Henceforth you will not imprison me any 
more than you can imprison thought. I am no 
longer a man; I am the type and the ideal of 
the human form. Violence can never seize upon 
me to make me die. You will not confine me, 
you whom the insanity of riches binds with chains 
of gold; but if you remember my words and if 
you recover your senses, my word will make you 
free.” 

As he said this, all who were there shrugged 
their shoulders and laughed; and the servants, 
having approached to seize him, dared not lay 
hands on him. But Jesus went out and departed 
from that assembly. 

He walked through the city, and saw men who 


88 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


worked from morning to night in order to live, 
and who had never asked themselves of what use 
life could be. 

Others, who lived by fraud and shameful traf- 
ficking, extinguishing the last spark of their soul 
every day in infamy, as if they had hired them- 
selves to corruption and death. 

He saw others, the whole of whose existence 
was a lie; and when he sought what truth they 
could conceal with so much care and so much 
difficulty, he found none. 

Some loved without being loved, and, on that 
very account, persisted in loving more; others 
prided themselves in loving nothing, and they 
stupefied themselves in order that they might not 
see themselves alone, for they were afraid of 
themselves. 

There were some who drank and sang in order 
to swallow their tears and to conceal their sobs. 

Others ran about at night, disguised in strange 
habiliments; they met in vast halls illuminated by 
brilliant lights; there they insulted each other with 
a laugh, assembled by chance, danced, stamped, 
shouted, rushed together pell-mell. There were 
prepared prostitution and debauchery; there youth 
rapidly grew old; there intellect was extinguished 
and lost forever. This was called diversion. 
Mothers permitted their sons to go there, and 


HOUSE OF THE INSANE 89 

men often themselves conducted thither women 
whom they pretended to love. 

In all that great city, in fine, the least wicked 
and the most wise were those who lived like ani- 
mals. The others were demons. 

Jesus then said to himself: “All these men 
are devoid of sense, and they confine in a pre- 
tended house of the insane those who do not 
think like them. I will therefore go into the 
house of the insane and will there seek for wis- 
dom.” 

And as he is the physician of souls, he took the 
appearance of a physician, and went to the hos- 
pital for the insane. 

The first whom he met there said to him: “ I 
am a king.” And Jesus said: “Many other 
men pretend the same thing. The only difference 
between them and this one is, that their peculiar 
fantasy is contagious, and that they find a people 
to believe them.” 

Another then approached and said, “ I am 
God!” 

“ All the wise men of the age say the same 
thing,” replied Jesus. “ Why then do they con- 
sider you insane ? ” 

“ It is because I am not willing to adore them,” 
replied the crazy man; “ being unable and unwill- 
ing to adore any other than myself.” 


9 ° 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


“They are all like you,” said Jesus to him; 
“ only they do not say it, and pretend to adore 
others in order to be adored in their turn.” 

“ They feel then very plainly that they are 
not God, and they pretend to be God in spite of 
their own conscience,” replied the crazy man tri- 
umphantly. “ They have therefore confined me 
from envy and because I alone, among them all, 
was wise ! ” 

“ No, but they were more insane than you,” 
said Jesus, “ and they are so still.” 

There came another and said: “ I am not 
God, but I wish to do what God has not yet done; 
I wish to secure the happiness of men.” 

Jesus looked at him with a melancholy air and 
said: “ Do you know what it costs and how 
much time is required to succeed? ” 

“ Trouble and time are nothing,” replied the 
insane man. “ Truth is a seed which germinates 
slowly, but which infallibly bears its fruit. I have 
discovered the two great laws of nature: the unity 
of substance and the harmony of the movement 
which modifies it. That movement is the music 
of God which vibrates by octaves; the highest 
notes correspond with the lowest by innumerable 
scales of which analogy is the key. Let man 
understand the work of God, and imitate it in his 
social arrangements. This is the realization of 
the Gospel and the salvation of the world.” 


HOUSE OF THE INSANE 


9 1 


Jesus replied to him: “Temples are still be- 
ing built. I would that the words you have just 
uttered could be deeply engraved on a tablet of 
brass, and that tablet be buried under the foun- 
dation of the last church that shall be built. When 
it shall be brought to light some day, men will 
perhaps understand what you have just said; but 
if you continue to talk thus, you will die here, and 
no one in the world will be interested in you dur- 
ing your life or will remember you after your 
death.” 

“ Excepting God,” said the insane man. 

“ And myself,” added the Christ, and he clasped 
the hand of the poor insane man. 

Then he approached another who had been 
chained, because he was considered dangerous. 
This one wept with indignation and repeated: 
“ They have disposed of me and I did not belong 
to them; I have labored and they have consumed 
the fruits of my labor; they have eaten my flesh 
and my blood. The earth belongs to God, who 
loans it to all his children, and they say, * The 
earth belongs to us! ’ And because those brig- 
ands are the strongest, they make the children of 
God die of hunger ! The robbers possess the 
world; and of their robbery they have made the 
basis of their laws and their morality. Oh! if 
the poor should one day be tired of suffering and 
should unite for vengeance ! ” 


92 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


“Hold your tongue!” then cried the hoarse 
voice of a keeper to the furious man. “ Hold 
your tongue, or you shall be gagged again.” 

“ Will that prove that you and your masters 
are not robbers and assassins?” cried the insane 
man, with still increasing excitement. 

“ It will prove that you must hold your 
tongue, ” said the keeper ; and, with the assistance 
of two or three of his fellows, he approached the 
crazy man and gagged him with the greater facil- 
ity because his feet and his hands were fastened 
to rings of iron. 

Jesus passed near him and pacified him by a 
look, but he did not speak to him, for there is 
always a kind of insult in the words which are 
addressed to one who cannot answer; but he said 
to the keeper: “It is by embittering this man 
with cruel treatment that you make him furious. 
Be more humane towards him, and his poor heart 
will be pacified; for I tell you in truth that his 
madness is only the love of justice carried to ex- 
treme, and the more he is tormented, the more 
dangerous and incurable will his malady become. 

“ Only pray to God that it may not be con- 
tagious, and may not spread among the people, 
for then there would be a horrible convulsion, 
like that of the last judgment, and heaven and 
earth would be shaken by it.” 

Having said these things, Jesus stretched out 


HOUSE OF THE INSANE 


93 

his hand over those poor suffering heads, and he 
spoke in secret to all those broken hearts. 

Then they forgot for a moment their miseries 
and their furies; they thought they heard voices 
which came from heaven. Some wept, and their 
tears did them good; others, more happy, fell 
asleep and dreamt that they were dead. 






























































4 











TENTH LEGEND 

THE HEIRS OF PILATE 

T HERE was at that time a merchant 
who passed for a model of integrity 
and justice; the strictest probity had al- 
ways governed him in his transactions; 
he never received more than was due to him, and 
was contented, for his profit, with what was con- 
formable to the usual laws of trade and author- 
ized by custom. 

All his fellow merchants laughed at him and 
predicted his speedy ruin. Nevertheless, con- 
trary to their expectation, not only was he not 
ruined, but he prospered and grew rich. 

He was quite intelligent in matters of business, 
but there his genius stopped; he did not wish to 
do evil, but neither did he know how to do good. 
He had wished to make for himself a good repu- 
tation, in order that he might afterwards esteem 
himself according to the reputation he should have 
made, for he needed the opinion of others in 
order to regulate his own, like persons who have 
a watch and cannot tell the hour by the sun. 

Now, this man, who knew not how to judge 

95 


9 6 THE LAST INCARNATION 

himself, was called upon to judge others, because 
he had money. He therefore went to the tribu- 
nal, and listed to the arguments in the cause as 
well as he could. The case was as follows : 

A woman who was intelligent and of an ele- 
vated genius, yielding to the corruption of the age 
and prostituting herself to the attraction of riches, 
had married before men one whom, before God, 
she could never love. 

At the moment of undergoing the profanation 
of her modesty, she had a horror of her fault and 
refused what was required of her. 

Having arrived at the house of the man whom 
she ought never to have called her husband, she 
confessed to him her remorse and her disgust, 
asked of him in mercy to let her escape, and of- 
fered to him, in exchange for her liberty, all that 
she possessed in the world. She was not allowed 
to depart, she was kept as a captive, and he whom 
she could not look upon without disgust at last 
compelled her to yield to what he thought he could 
call his right. The wife resigned herself, but, 
after some time, the husband was attacked by 
strange pains and died. 

It was supposed that the woman must have 
hated that man enough to attempt his life; it was 
believed that she might have become criminal 
from despair, so much was she known to have 
suffered. Besides, the superiority of her intellect 


THE HEIRS OF PILATE 


97 


had made enemies of those whom envy made her 
oppressors, and she was accused of the most 
cowardly of crimes. 

That was alleged against her which should have 
justified her; the indications which accused her 
were so grossly evident that they betrayed a for- 
eign hand. Besides, had the victim been really 
poisoned? Poison was found everywhere, except 
in the body; science doubted and contradicted 
itself, but the morality of the world has also its 
fanaticism: it was pretended that if this woman 
should be acquitted, all family and social bonds 
would be broken. It was then that the honest 
merchant of whom we have spoken was called, 
with several other inhabitants of the same city, 
to decide upon the fate of the accused. 

Not daring to condemn her absolutely, when 
so many reasons were presented in her favor, nor 
to acquit her, because they believed society threat- 
ened with so serious a danger, those men dared to 
decide that the unfortunate was culpable, but that 
with her crime were connected circumstances which 
diminished its horror. 

They did not think that if the crime had been 
committed, the most cowardly hypocrisy had pre- 
pared it, the blackest perfidy had consummated it, 
the most audacious perversity had denied it, by 
making a jest of everything that is sacred in heaven 
and upon earth; and, by a contradictory decision, 


98 THE LAST INCARNATION 

human justice seemed, in these unheard of circum- 
stances, to condemn innocence and to acquit guilt. 

The virtuous merchant returned home with a 
quiet heart, after having cooperated in this judg- 
ment; still, he dared not embrace his wife, and 
his children seemed to him sad when they came 
to meet him. 

However, he took his meal as usual, but invol- 
untarily shuddered several times when his wife 
offered him drink. At night, he retired early; 
and, when he was alone in his chamber, he was 
suddenly seized with fear, for it seemed to him 
that he heard some one walking behind him, and 
he knew that no one could have entered the 
chamber. 

Then he turned round trembling, and saw near 
him the Christ, who looked upon him with a sad 
and severe countenance. The Christ appeared to 
him such as he was formerly seen before Pilate, 
clothed in the white robe which Herod had caused 
to be thrown over him, his face furrowed with 
blood and with tears, his arms bound, and his 
hands tied in the knots of a disgraceful rope. 

“ I come,” said he to the merchant, “ to be 
judged again by you, for half the world have 
protested against my condemnation, while the 
other half still say that I was a criminal. 

“ You who dare to affirm when others doubt, 
I come to ask of you if you approve the sentence 


THE HEIRS OF PILATE 


99 


of Pilate? of that judge who thought he could 
wash his hands with water, after having bathed 
them perchance in innocent blood? 

“ Unfortunate ! you see the knife suspended 
over a head, and, according to your feeble intel- 
lect, when reason dares not determine, you decide 
that the knife must fall, and you pronounce the 
fatal word, without ever asking yourself if society 
be not a solidarity in the crimes of its unhappy chil- 
dren, and if, in passing that sentence of death, 
you did not condemn yourself. 

“ But these thoughts disturb you in spite of 
yourself, and arise in your bosom unconsciously 
to you; doubt causes the sentence to expire on 
your lips : you condemn and you excuse at the same 
time; you say yes and no in the same breath, and 
the judgments you venture to deliver resemble 
the blind blows of a confused assassin, who turns 
away his head and strikes at random.” 

“ Master,” said the juryman trembling, “ why 
do you address me alone, when so many others 
do like me and think they act conscientiously?” 

“ Because you have the reputation of a just man, 
above all the others,” said Jesus to him, “ and I 
knock at that door which I think will be opened.” 

“ But what must I do, Lord? ” asked the mer- 
chant, hiding his face in his hands. 

“ Never decide unfavorably when you can 
doubt,” said the Christ, “ and impose upon your- 


ioo THE LAST INCARNATION 


self the duty of saving a man every time the sen- 
tence shall have condemned one. For I tell you in 
truth, that my Father will require of you an ac- 
count of all the victims of society, if, in the place 
of the heads which shall fall, you do not present 
to him joyous and grateful heads. Each time, 
therefore, that you shall help to send food to the 
scaffold, snatch a victim from poverty, for he 
alone has a right to take away life who can give 
or restore it. He who kills without saving, re- 
sembles the evil genius of Cain, who is the father 
of all homicides. If man wishes to be a judge 
like unto God, let him therefore be a Savior like 
him.” 

“ Lord,” replied the juryman, “ I have often 
given alms, and have never refused bread to him 
who asked it of me.” 

“ Therein you have done well,” said the Christ; 
“ but that is not enough ; you are rich, and in that 
quality you should be the father of the poor; you 
are a judge, and in that terrible function you have 
perhaps made orphans. Now, a father owes him- 
self to his family, and he who has made orphans 
ought to adopt them.” 

“ How shall I know them? and how can I take 
care of them? My whole property perhaps 
would not be enough.” 

“ The unhappy and the orphans are brothers,” 
said the Savior, “ and whatever you shall do for 


THE HEIRS OF PILATE 


IOI 


the first you meet will be counted to you as an 
acquittance towards the others. Do what you 
can, and you will have accomplished all justice. 
Let the tears of gratitude purify your hands, per- 
haps dyed with the blood of the innocent, and the 
martyrs themselves will pray and will suffer for 
you, and you shall be saved by the virtue of the 
blood that is shed, as those of my executioners 
who believed and loved were saved by my cross.” 

















ELEVENTH LEGEND 


THE REPROBATES AND THE ELECT 

A FTER having said these things, the 
Christ was moved by the sufferings of 
those who die unjustly condemned, and 
he felt that from his whole heart, full 
of mercy and forgiveness, overflowed an immense 
love and an infinite blessing for those poor souls 
who depart alone and desolate, after having been 
cursed and rejected by the society of men. 

Then he remembered the crowd which had 
cried out against him with one voice, “ Crucify 
him! ” and the pharisees who had laughed and 
wagged their heads while they insulted his agony, 
and the despairing groan which had at that 
moment escaped from his heart — “ My God ! 
my God ! why hast thou forsaken me? ” Then he 
transported himself in spirit to the confines of the 
visible world, to that wide extended desert hardly 
lighted by a doubtful twilight, where in a terrible 
silence wander those souls which seek their way. 

There, in the midst of a plain, the mute and 
shifting soil of which seems formed of the ashes 
of the dead, he found two gates formerly built 

103 


104 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


by the power of the first pontiffs; between the 
two gates sat a motionless old man, who seemed 
no longer to see or to hear anything. It was the 
image of him to whom it was formerly said, 
“ Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build 
my church.” 

But the rock, formerly living, had become inert 
and cold, like the statues which pray upon tombs. 

Before the two gates pressed a crowd of un- 
decided and terrified souls; for the figure of stone 
held two keys in its hand, but it could no longer 
move its hand, and none could take the keys 
from it in order to open the gates. 

When the Christ appeared in the midst of the 
souls, radiant and with his cross in his hand, they 
all prostrated themselves, pressing around him 
like an immense flock. 

The Christ approached the image of stone, and 
easily took from it the key of heaven; neverthe- 
less, he could not use it to open the gate, for, by 
covering it with gold and silver, it had been falsi- 
fied. 

As to the key of hell, not being able to take it 
from the hand of the statue, Jesus broke it; then 
he touched the two gates by turns with his cross, 
and they opened of themselves. 

Then he seated himself near the gate of hell, 
because that alone is dangerous to men, and the 
gate of heaven needs not to be guarded. 


REPROBATES AND THE ELECT 105 

In fact, the arms of God are always open to 
his creatures; the laws which he has given to 
them are laws of love, which should draw them 
to him, and not drive them away. If he threat- 
ens, it is a paternal warning, and he wishes to 
turn them from evil, because he is anxious for 
their happiness. 

Jesus therefore stretched out his cross to close 
the passage to those despairing souls who sought 
the road to hell. Those who believed them- 
selves most culpable, presented themselves the 
first; they were those unfortunates who had suf- 
fered so much in life as to kill themselves. 

A woman was on her knees before the Savior, 
and she said: “ I endured life long and sorrow- 
fully while my children had need of me, but I 
afterward had need of their assistance, and the 
labor of my poor daughter was not enough for 
her support and mine; I had a son who had de- 
voted himself to the service of the altar, but at 
the moment of receiving the last orders, he con- 
fessed that he loved, and thy ministers rejected 
him ! Obliged then to live by the work of his 
hands, when he had never learnt to work, his own 
misfortunes were enough for him; and I volun- 
tarily killed myself, in order to relieve my chil- 
dren from the burden of my old age.” 

The Christ did not at first answer this woman; 
he wept. 


io 6 THE LAST INCARNATION 


Then he said to her with gentleness: “ You 
are not the author of your death; those who de- 
stroyed the future of your son, shall answer for 
it in your stead. Enter into the peace of your 
God, for your devotedness has expiated your sin.” 

And he showed to the poor woman the gate 
of heaven; but she was not willing to enter, “ for,” 
said she, “ I await my son, who still suffers upon 
the earth, and who will perhaps die sadly like 
myself, cursed by a Church which he did not wish 
to deceive, and abandoned by a religion which he 
loved more than his life and than mine.” 

A man afterwards presented himself and said 
to the Lord: “ I was not afraid of life; I loved 
its combats and its trials; but I saw that I could 
not live without degrading my mind and my heart. 
I was a writer without fortune, and I had not the 
sad courage to barter the sacred gift of eloquence; 
but poverty would perhaps have weakened my 
courage, and by degrees have debased my soul, 
and I did not wait for it.” 

“Why did you despair?” said the Christ. 
“ Suffering never debases the strong.” 

“ Lord, I was weak, inasmuch as I feared.” 

“ Remain, therefore, at the gate of heaven un- 
til the time assigned for your trials shall be ac- 
complished, for it is not just that the workman 
should rest before he has finished his work. 
Nevertheless, there is this of good in you, that 


REPROBATES AND THE ELECT 107 

you feared debasement more than death, and your 
sacrifice will live in the remembrance of God.” 

Others had killed themselves from despairing 
love, and the Christ did not permit them to rush 
into hell, where love can never enter; but neither 
could they find rest in heaven except with those 
whom they loved, and they must seek or wait for 
them. 

And the Christ said: “It is not the poor, 
despairing soul that should be condemned, but 
those who allow the poor soul to despair. It is 
not the loving and desolate hearts that must be 
accused, but those who separate what God in- 
tended to join together. 

“ Therefore my Father will be less rigorous 
towards all these poor souls, than towards those 
of the scribes, the pharisees, the doctors of the 
law, and the moralists without heart. For the 
disowned of the world are the elect of heaven, 
and the elect of the world will be disowned in the 
kingdom of my Father.” 

After those who had committed suicide, came 
those women who were doubly dead, for they had 
lost their modesty before losing their life. 

One of them, hiding her face, said to the Lord: 
“ I was only a child when my mother sold me. 
I grew up in shame and in sorrow, weeping over 
my purity as a fallen angel must weep over 
heaven; but I never abandoned my mother, 


io8 THE LAST INCARNATION 


though she no longer deserved that sacred name. 
I never cursed her, and I died of the privations 
which I imposed on myself for her sake.” 

“ Rise, my daughter,” said the Christ to her, 
“ go and take your seat among the virgins and 
the martyrs.” 

Now there were at the entrance of the gate of 
heaven some austere souls, whose life had been 
passed in the practice of a scrupulous devotion, 
and those souls murmured at the clemency of the 
Savior, and no longer wished to enter heaven 
when they saw that sinning souls were admitted 
there. 

Jesus said to them: “It is not I who con- 
demn you, but your pride has judged you. Since 
you no longer wish for heaven, where my clemency 
admits your brothers, the gate of hell is open, 
and I will not close it against you.” 

Thus among those who judged themselves 
worthy of hell, Jesus found many elect for 
heaven; and not one of those who thought them- 
selves worthy of heaven was found pure enough 
to be admitted there. 

They were therefore sent into the lower circle 
of trials, into that furnace of life militant where 
fire purifies souls. 

Now, the fire which burns souls to save them 
is God’s eternal love, which is the peace of holy 
souls and the punishment of the wicked. 


TWELFTH LEGEND 


THE SERMON ON THE PLAIN 

A T that time the workmen went out from 
the great city and assembled in a neigh- 
boring plain, and they said: “We 
work hard during the long hours of day, 
and we can hardly get a piece of bread to carry 
home to our children at night; our wives are com- 
pelled to work like ourselves, and life fails them 
at the same time with courage and hope. We 
build the houses of the rich, and we know not 
where to lay our heads; we weave the stuff of their 
splendid garments, and we are naked; we sow 
and we reap for them, and we have no where- 
withal to prevent us from dying of hunger. Let 
us die therefore if necessary, but let us work no 
longer for false brothers. The time will come 
when our strength will fail us, when early old 
age, or the disgraceful diseases which attack 
poverty will paralyze us, and then no one will 
come to our assistance, and we shall be compelled 
to die still more miserably, and after having suf- 
fered still longer.” 

To this others answered: “Doubtless we 

109 


1 10 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


have the right to stop working, and to die; but 
can we kill our wives and our children? Can we 
condemn them to the horrible suffering of hunger, 
while we have arms and a heart? ” 

“ What shall we do then? ” cried all the voices 
together, while fists clenched in suffering and in 
anger were raised in threatening gestures above 
the heads of the whole crowd. 

“ Death to those who prevent us from living! ” 
cried a voice, which was followed by a long and 
terrible murmur. 

“ Let us march ! ” cried the most excited. 

“ Stop! ” said others, “ where are we going? ” 
“ We are going to fight against the rich.” 

“ But the rich will defend themselves, and will 
crush us. They have public order and its guar- 
antees on their side; they have the law with them; 
and we have not even a chief to lead us.” 

Nevertheless, in the midst of the crowd, a circle 
was formed around a young man, and several 
workmen, who recognized him, cried out : “ Make 
room for the apprentice carpenter! Silence! 
listen to him ! he will tell us what we must do ! ” 
Then came the four journeymen whom the 
Christ had met upon the road, and they said to 
the workmen: “Brothers, do not deceive your- 
selves, for this man is not what he appears to 
be. If he speaks, listen to him as you would 
listen to God himself, and do all that he shall 


THE SERMON ON THE PLAIN hi 


tell you; for under the humble appearance of a 
workman like ourselves, it is the Christ who has 
come again among men.” 

These words excited murmurs in the assembly. 

The greater number contradicted, others drew 
near from curiosity, and others still, cried out to 
Jesus: “ If thou be the Christ, prove it by mira- 
cles, and we will fall on our knees and worship 
thee.” 

Jesus answered: “So long as the people 
groan in servitude, they should pray upon their 
knees, for their very attitude is then a prayer: 
they ask God to raise them. 

“ For this reason, before praying, interrogate 
your soul. If your soul is debased by servitude, 
if it bows before the terrors of death, if it still 
bends under the power of men like a broken reed, 
fall upon your knees and pray that God may 
stretch out his hand to you. 

“ But if your soul is free, if it is ready to march 
in order to return to its native land, if your will 
is upright, if nothing chains your motions, remain 
standing while you pray to God, for then your 
head and your heart will be nearer to heaven. 

“ Thus, therefore, standing, or on your knees, 
around me who remain erect and who pray, let us 
all worship God together, for to you I must be 
only the first worshiper of God. 

“ Now, brothers, remember what I told you so 


1 1 2 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


many centuries ago, and what you have not yet 
understood : 1 Seek first the kingdom of God and 

his justice, and all other things shall be given unto 
you in addition.’ Why then should you be 
troubled about what you shall eat and what you 
shall drink? Is the kingdom of God only in food 
and in drink? Out of the kingdom of God it is 
impossible that all shall be fed and lodged and 
clothed. 

“ Why should you expect the fruits of the 
promised land out of the promised land? Do you 
believe that the desert can furnish to you the 
beautiful harvests of the fields of Israel? ” 

The workmen listened attentively, but they did 
not yet understand, and one of them, raising his 
voice, said: “Master, you do, in fact, speak in 
parables and images like the Christ; are we then 
not yet in a condition to understand, and could 
you not express your thought more clearly? 
What is that kingdom of God, of which you 
speak? Is it merely the paradise which the 
priests would have us expect after death? Is it 
there only that we can hope to be lodged and fed 
and clothed? Do you intend to advise us to go 
to mass and to vespers, in order to better the 
condition of our wives and children? ” 

Jesus answered: “ Did you not learn in your 
childhood to ask God that his kingdom might 
come, and did you not say to him every morning 


THE SERMON ON THE PLAIN 113 

and evening, 4 Thy will be done on earth as it 
is done in heaven? ’ 

“ The kingdom of God is the reign of the will 
of God. Now, what God wills, is harmony and 
justice. 

“ The kingdom of God is the reign of liberty, 
because the true children of God can will only 
good, and must do what they will. But in order 
to will good, it is necessary to know what good 
is. Liberty cannot reign without intelligence. 

“ The kingdom of God is the reign of equality, 
because the stronger owe to the weaker the pro- 
tection of their strength, and the wiser, instead of 
exploiting the inexperience of the less intelligent, 
ought to guide them with goodness and without 
humiliating them. In order to do all this, it is 
necessary to love each other a great deal. The 
reign of equality cannot therefore be established 
without the most perfect charity. And the ful- 
filling of the kingdom of God will be the reign of 
fraternity; when men will no longer say, ‘Each 
for himself; ’ but, ‘ Each for all and all for each.’ 

“ Now, for what purpose have you come into 
the plain? Have you come to hear the word? 
But the time has come when truth needs no longer 
to cry upon the mountain, nor to assemble its 
hearers in the plain; the word now resembles the 
flowers of spring, and the leaves of autumn which 
the wind scatters everywhere. You have come 


1 1 4 THE LAST INCARNATION 

together without knowing what you ought to do ; 
this is why brute force, which knows what it de- 
sires, will disperse you. 

“ You say that you are strong enough to at- 
tack the rich and to overcome them! But when 
you shall have opposed violence to violence, and 
disorder to disorder, will peace and harmony be 
the result? Do you simply wish to rob the rob- 
bers and to assassinate the assassins, in order to 
put yourselves in their places, so that others may 
afterwards rob and assassinate you? 

“ Because your house is inconvenient, will you 
burn or destroy it before having built a new one, 
and before even knowing upon what plan you will 
build it? 

“ You ask what is the kingdom of God: it is the 
kingdom of peace and harmony. 

“ Look at the sky and see the spheres move 
without confusion around their centers! Look 
at the earth and consider the regular movement 
of the seasons, and the harmonious progress of 
vegetation and life ! 

“ Do you know what attractions and what 
forces make so many stars gravitate around one 
and the same sun? Have you taken the compass 
of God to measure the distances and balance the 
various attractions? Do you know exactly by 
what degrees of heat and cold the germs are 
preserved, developed and fertilized? You say 


THE SERMON ON THE PLAIN 115 

to God, ‘ Thy will be done on earth as it is done 
in heaven,’ and you do not think that the social 
universe has its attractions and its laws of equi- 
librium as well as the celestial universe. Now, 
do you know those laws? 

“ Be not terrified, nevertheless, and be not dis- 
couraged, for God knows that of which you are 
ignorant. He has himself meditated the plan of 
the grand human harmony, and in order to as- 
sign to each of you his place, he has magnetized 
you as he has the stars. Know then, before all, 
that your rule is not your individual caprice, badly 
regulated by a falsified understanding, and that 
your law should not be the erroneous opinion of 
the world! 

“ I said ‘ woe to the world,’ and I shall still 
repeat it, so long as it has eyes with which it 
does not see, and ears with which it does not 
hear. 

“ Until this day, charity has been a sacrifice, 
and devotedness a martyrdom. But why should 
love, which ought to be the life of all, triumph 
only in the death of the elect? 

“Well! I tell you now that love is not only 
the life of heaven, but also that of the earth, and 
that the devotedness of heroes must become the 
happiness of the weakest children. 

“ Have I not told you that goodness and gen- 
tleness must one day possess the earth ? 


ii 6 THE LAST INCARNATION 


“ Have I not told you that if two or three 
were met together in my name, I would be in the 
midst of them? and if I said two or three, what 
shall I say of two or three hundred thousand? 

“ Have I not told you, ‘ Happy are the peace- 
makers, for they shall be called the children of 
God?’ 

“ If two or three hundred thousand of you 
have met in the plain, and each one has his indi- 
vidual thought, you are only a dangerous assem- 
blage, useless for your salvation. But let a thou- 
sand men dispersed in their houses and in their 
workshops be united in the same thought, and 
direct their efforts towards one and the same ob- 
ject: there will be a real power capable of leading 
a great people. 

“ Do you wish to be free? Be strong. 

“ Do you wish to be strong? Be united. 

“Do you wish to be united? Be intelligent 
and good. 

“ Do you wish to be intelligent and good? Be 
just. 

“ Before asking justice then of those who op- 
press you, cause justice to reign in your midst. 

“ Be not a crowd, be a people; be not a mass, 
be a body. And in order that this body may live, 
let love be its soul ! 

“ You wish to destroy evil, then first do all the 


THE SERMON ON THE PLAIN 117 

good you can; for good is the antidote of evil, 
and you can destroy evil only by opposing good 
to it. 

“ Do you know how twelve workmen conquered 
the world? They first sought the kingdom of 
God and his justice; they united themselves in- 
separably in the same spirit and the same love, 
then they dispersed and they were always to- 
gether. 

“ I said to you, ‘ Happy are the poor in spirit,’ 
because the kingdom of intelligence had not yet 
come, and it was necessary to save the world 
by faith; and now I say to you, ‘Happy are 
those who are rich in intelligence,’ because they 
dispose of the powers of the spirit of truth! 

“ You know that I had still many things to say 
to you, but you could not bear them then: now 
comes the spirit of intelligence, which will make 
you understand what I said to you and divine what 
I did not say to you. But know that the spirit 
of intelligence is a spirit of gentleness, and this 
is why religious symbols represent it under the 
form of a dove. 

“ Violence consumes and destroys itself, but all 
the tyrannies of the world can do nothing against a 
will which is founded on justice. 

“ Therefore, before destroying the city of men, 
labor to build the city of God. The city of God 


1 1 8 THE LAST INCARNATION 


must first be realized in a people, for the people 
is to the city what the soul is to the body, what 
the body is to the garment. 

“ Have, therefore, all of you, one same spirit 
and one same will; cause the spirit of gentleness 
and of peace to reign in your houses; seek not 
the forgetfulness of your miseries in an intem- 
perance which increases them and destroys your 
health; neglect no means of instructing your- 
selves; let everything that is yours be also your 
brethren’s, and let your brethren’s sufferings be 
also yours, and you will be the people of God. 

“ Then, I tell you in truth that your masters 
of to-day will be your servants, and you will begin 
to reign over the world.” 

As Jesus finished speaking, an officer of the 
police and some soldiers appeared, summoning the 
workmen to disperse. 

Then all looked at Jesus, who, stretching forth 
his hands, said to them : “ Obey as I obeyed. I 

brought into the world a new law, and I destroyed 
the old law only by submitting myself to it, even 
unto death. 

“ Disperse, and carry with you the remem- 
brance of my word: it is that which will reunite 
you.” 

Immediately the workmen dispersed, and the 
officer of police, wishing to give proof of his zeal, 
approached Jesus and ordered the soldiers to ar- 


THE SERMON ON THE PLAIN 119 

rest him as one who had spoken at a seditious 
meeting. 

But Jesus suddenly disappeared, so that those 
men looked for him on one side and on the other, 
and mutually blamed each other for having let him 
escape. 

Now, Jesus left them in this manner, not be- 
cause he had to fear a new passion in that spiritual 
and symbolic state in which he can no longer suffer, 
except in the person of his brothers, but in order 
to spare a new crime to unintelligent judges. 






f 






THIRTEENTH LEGEND 

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD 

A T that time, the Christ passed by the 
fields of tombs, and he there saw a young 
man who was on his knees and was weep- 
ing before a cross. 

On seeing this young man, Jesus had pity on 
his sorrow, and drawing near, said to him, “ Why 
do you weep ? ” 

He who was weeping turned around, and 
stretching out his hand answered, “ My mother 
has been here for three days.” 

Jesus said to him: “ Believe me, my son, your 
mother is not here; only the last vestment which 
she put off has been deposited here; why do you 
weep over those insensible remains? Rise up and 
walk; your mother waits for you.” 

The young man shook his head sadly and said: 
“ I will not rise, and I will not walk to go and 
seek death; I shall await it and it will come; and 
then, I know, I shall be again united to my 
mother.” 

Then the Christ: “Death awaits death, and 
life seeks life ! Do not sadden the soul which has 


121 


122 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


preceded you by a selfish and sterile sorrow; do 
not retard her progress towards God by your 
despair and inertness. For her love still lives in 
your heart, and you will not have lost her if you 
make her live worthily in you. Instead of weep- 
ing for your mother, resuscitate her! Do not 
look at me with astonishment, and do not think 
I make a jest of your sorrow! She whom you 
regret is near you ; one of the veils which separated 
your souls has fallen; one still remains. And sep- 
arated only by that veil, you ought to live for each 
other; you will work for her and she will work 
for you.” 

“ How shall I work for her? ” replied the or- 
phan; “she no longer needs anything, now that 
she is in the ground.” 

“ You deceive yourself, my son, and you still 
confound the body with the clothing. In the 
world of spirits, she has more than ever need of 
intelligence and love. Now, you are the life of 
her heart, and the engrossing thought of her mind, 
and she calls you to her assistance, in order that 
you may go through life doing good, and in order 
that you may reach her with full hands when God 
shall reunite you. 

“ In order to have the right to rest, man must 
work. Now, if you do not work for your mother, 
you shackle her soul. This is why I said to you, 
‘ Rise up and walk,’ because the soul of your 


THE LIVING AND THE DEAD 123 

mother will rise and will walk with you, and you 
will resuscitate her in yourself if you make her 
thought and her love fruitful. 

“ She has a body upon earth, it is yours; you 
have a soul in heaven, it is hers. Let that soul 
and that body walk together, and your mother 
will live again. Believe me, my son, thought and 
love never die, and those whom you believe to be 
dead are more alive than you, if they think and 
love more. 

“If the thought of death saddens and terrifies 
you, take refuge in the bosom of life; there you 
will find all those whom you love. The dead are 
those who do not think and who do not love; for 
they work for corruption and corruption consumes 
them in its turn. Let the dead then weep for the 
dead, and live with the living! 

“Love is the bond of souls; and when it is 
pure, that bond is indestructible. Your mother 
precedes you, she goes towards God; but she is 
still chained to you; and if you slumber in torpor 
and in selfish sorrow, she will be compelled to wait 
for you, and she will suffer. 

“ But I tell you in truth that all the good which 
you shall do will be reckoned to her soul, and that 
if you do evil, she will voluntarily undergo its 
penalty. This is why I say to you : If you love 
her, live for her.” 

Then the young man rose, and his tears ceased 


124 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


to flow, and he looked upon the face of the Savior 
with astonishment, for the countenance of the 
Christ was radiant with intelligence and love, and 
immortality shone in his eyes. 

Then he took the young man by the hand and 
said to him: “ Come.” 

Then he led him upon a hill which overlooked 
the whole city, and he said to him: “There is 
the real field of tombs ! 

“ Below there, in those palaces which sadden 
the horizon, there are dead persons who should 
be wept for much more than those whose remains 
are here, for those persons do not rest. They 
move about in corruption and dispute with the 
worms for their food; they are like a man who 
has been buried alive. Their chest wants the air 
of heaven, and the earth weighs heavy upon 
them. They are nailed in the narrow and mis- 
erable institutions which they have made, as in the 
boards of a coffin. 

“ Young man, who wept, and whose tears my 
words have dried, weep now and groan over the 
dead who still suffer! weep over those who be- 
lieve themselves alive and who are tormented 
corpses! It is to those that a powerful voice 
should cry : ‘ Come out from your tombs ! ’ 

Oh! when will the trumpet of the angel sound? 

“ The angel that must awaken the world, is the 


THE LIVING AND THE DEAD 125 

angel of intelligence; the angel that must save the 
world, is the angel of love. 

“ The light will be as the lightning which rises 
at the east and which is seen at the west at the 
same moment; at its voice the body of the Christ, 
which is the fraternal bread, will be revealed to 
all, and around the body which must feed them, 
the eagles will gather together. 

“ Then the human word, freed from selfish in- 
terests, will be united to the divine word. And 
the unitary voice, resounding through the entire 
world, will be the trumpet of the angel. 

“ Then the living will rise, the living who have 
been thought dead, and who still suffer while 
awaiting their deliverance. Then all who are not 
dead will march forward and will go to the pres- 
ence of the Lord; while the ashes of those who no 
longer exist will be swept away by the wind. 

“ Young man, hold yourself ready, and take 
care not to die ! Live for those whom you love, 
and love those who live, and do not weep for 
those who have ascended a step higher than your- 
self upon the ladder of life; weep for those who 
are dead! 

“ Your mother loved you, consequently loves 
you still more now that her thought and her love 
are freed from the weight of earth. Weep for 
those who do not think of you, and who do not 
love you. 


126 THE LAST INCARNATION 


“ For I tell you in truth, that humanity has but 
one body and one soul, and that it lives every- 
where that it feels itself work and suffer. 

“ Now, a member which is no longer sensible 
to the well-being, or the suffering of the other 
members, is dead, and must soon be cut off.” 

Having said these things, the Christ disappeared 
from the eyes of the young man, who, after hav- 
ing remained for some moments motionless, and, 
as if struck by the remembrance of a dream, si- 
lently resumed the road to the city, saying to him- 
self: “ I will seek the living among the dead. 
I will do good to all those who suffer, by suffering 
with them and loving them, in order that the soul 
of my mother may know it and may bless me in 
heaven. 

“ For I understand now that heaven is not far 
from us, and that the soul is to the body what the 
natural sky is to the earth. The sky which sur- 
rounds and supports the earth is filled with im- 
mensity, as the soul is intoxicated with God him- 
self. 

“ And those who live in the same thought and 
in the same love can never be separated.” 


FOURTEENTH LEGEND 


THE DISCOURAGED PHILOSOPHER 

A T that time there was a man who had 
studied all the sciences, and had medi- 
tated upon all systems, and who had 
come to doubt all things. 

Being itself appeared to him a dream, because 
he found no sufficient cause. He had sought for 
the nature of God and had not divined it, for he 
had never loved. And his intellect had become 
darkened, like the eye of him who looks fixedly 
at the sun. This is why he was sad and dis- 
couraged. 

Jesus, who thinks of the dead and who loves 
to cure the blind, had pity upon that poor diseased 
intellect and that extinguished heart; and he en- 
tered one evening into the solitary chamber of the 
philosopher. 

He was a pale man, bald, with hollow eyes, with 
furrowed brow and disdainful lips. 

He was watching alone, seated by a little table 
covered with papers and with books; but he no 
longer read and no longer wrote. 

Doubt bowed his head as if under a hand of 


127 


128 THE LAST INCARNATION 


lead, his fixed eyes did not see, and his mouth 
smiled vaguely with a profound bitterness. 

His lamp was consuming by his side, and his 
hours passed in silence without hope and without 
remembrance. 

Jesus remained near him without saying any- 
thing, and lifting his eyes to heaven he prayed. 

The philosopher slowly raised his head, then 
he shook it and let it fall again, murmuring in a 
low voice: “ Visionary.” 

“ Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be 
thy name! ” said Jesus. 

“ He let you die upon the cross,” returned the 
thinker, “and you cried to him in vain: ‘My 
God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me! ’ ” 

“May thy kingdom come!” continued the 
Savior. 

“ We have been waiting for it these eighteen 
hundred and forty years,” said the philosopher, 
“ and it is further off now than ever.” 

“ What do you know about it? ” then said the 
Master, looking upon him with a gentle and seri- 
ous eye. 

“ I do not know even what is the kingdom of 
God which is to come,” replied the philosopher. 
“ If there be a God, he reigns now or he will never 
reign. Now, as I do not see the kingdom of 
God, I do not expect it; and I do not even seek 
any longer to know if there be a God.” 


DISCOURAGED PHILOSOPHER 1 29 

“ Do you also doubt the existence of good and 
evil? ” asked Jesus. 

“ The distinction between them is arbitrary, 
since it varies according to time and place.” 

“ Put your finger into the flame of your lamp,” 
said the Savior. “ Why do you draw it back 
so quickly? Do you not know that a thinker like 
yourself has said that pain is not an evil? ” 

“ The reason is because I do not agree with 
him, but I do not know if I am more right than 
he.” 

“Why do you not agree with him?” 

“ Because I feel the pain and it is invincibly 
repugnant to me.” 

“ The distinction between good and evil is not 
arbitrary therefore so far as relates to your re- 
pugnances and attractions,” then said Jesus. 
“ And in fact evil could not be absolute. Evil 
exists only for you and for all beings which are 
still imperfect. It is for such therefore that the 
kingdom of God must come, because they them- 
selves will come into the kingdom of God. I 
have convinced you of a physical repugnance, and 
I will convince you as easily of a moral repug- 
nance. The fire warns you by pain that it would 
destroy the life of your body, and conscience 
warns you by its cries and its remorse, that crime 
would destroy the life of your soul. Evil for 
you, is destruction; good is life, and life is God! 


1 3 o THE LAST INCARNATION 

The earth buried in darkness now awaits the com- 
ing of the sun, and yet the sun remains radiant in 
the center of the universe, and it is the earth which 
gravitates around it. God reigns, but you have 
not entered into his kingdom: for the kingdom of 
my father is the kingdom of science and of love, 
of wisdom and of peace. The kingdom of God 
is the kingdom of light, and that light strikes your 
eyes which do not see it because they seek their 
brightness in themselves and find only darkness.” 

“ Lord, open thou my eyes,” said the philos- 
opher, “ and illumine my darkness.” 

Jesus said to him : “ If I had closed your eyes, 

I ought to open them for you; but if I open them 
and you please to close them again, how shall you 
see the light? Do you not know that the will of 
a man acts upon the lids of his eyes, and that if 
he is forced to keep his eyes open or shut, he 
loses his sight? 

“ I may induce you to kindle in yourself the 
fire which enlightens, and this is why I make 
you hear my words; and since you already desire 
that I should open your eyes, you are not far from 
seeing.” 

“ What is the fire which enlightens? ” asked the 
philosopher. 

“ You will know,” said the Christ, “ when you 
shall have loved a great deal. For if reason is 
like a lamp, love is its flame. If reason is as the 


DISCOURAGED PHILOSOPHER 13 1 

eye of our soul, love is its strength and its life. 
A great reason without love is a beautiful eye that 
is dead; it is a lamp richly carved, but cold and ex- 
tinct. 

“ When the selfishness of the animal passions 
had caused human philosophy to fail, I saved the 
world by faith, because faith is the philosophy of 
love. You believe those whom you love, and 
those by whom you know yourself to be loved; 
thus I gave an immense charity as a basis to faith, 
when I and my apostles had proved to men, by a 
bloody martyrdom, the sincerity of our love. 
And so long as the Church reigned by charity, she 
triumphed by faith; but faith awaits intelligence, 
and the moment is near when those who shall have 
believed without seeing, will understand and see. 

“ If therefore you wish to understand, begin by 
loving, in order to believe.” 

“ What then shall I believe, Lord? ” 

“Everything of which you are ignorant; for 
faith is the trust of reasonable ignorance. Believe 
everything that God knows, and your faith will 
embrace immensity. Trust to your celestial 
Father everything of which he reserves to himself 
the knowledge, and do not be anxious at first about 
the infinite destinies. Love that immense wisdom 
whose child you are; love other men who pass over 
the earth ignorant like yourself, and for the pres- 
ent still limit your science to the accomplishment 


i3 2 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


of your duties; you will soon see it grow of its own 
accord, and ascend towards God, for God allows 
himself to be seen by pure hearts.” 

“ Oh ! to see God ! ” cried the philosopher, open- 
ing his trembling lips, like a man who is thirsty 
and who expects the rain from heaven. “ Oh! to 
reunite at last in my thought all the scattered rays 
of that truth which I have so much loved, and 
which always escaped me ! But who will give me 
that immense love which makes man commune 
with God, and will bring him near to the center of 
all light?” 

“ You will deserve it by your works,” said the 
Christ, “ for if man is corrupted in the works of 
corruption, if he is destroyed in the works of ha- 
tred, he grows and is saved by works of love. In 
order to draw near to God, he must advance, and 
holy actions are the movements of our soul.” 

“What are really holy actions?” asked the 
doctor; “ are they prayer and fasting? ” 

“ Listen,” said the Christ, “ and do not rashly 
judge your brothers who have passed before you, 
seeking and weeping. Humanity is confirmed in 
its desire by prayer and tears. And those of its 
children who first thirsted for the things of heaven, 
abstained from those of the earth; but all this was 
only the beginning. It was necessary to know 
how to abstain, in order to learn how to use. It is 
first necessary to sacrifice the body to the mind, in 


DISCOURAGED PHILOSOPHER 133 

order to emancipate the mind. For the moral 
heaven is the liberty of the soul; but the soul is 
called upon to govern the body, and not to destroy 
it, as the material sky governs the earth and does 
not destroy it. The age of prayer and tears 
must give place to the age of labor and hope; for 
the prayer of the ancients was a labor, and it is 
necessary that our labor should be a more effica- 
cious and more active prayer.” 

“ How shall I labor? ” said the philosopher; “ I 
can do nothing useful.” 

“ Then you have lost the vigor of your mind in 
vain efforts,” replied the Christ; “ you have not 
even learnt how to live, you who wished to know 
everything. Become again a little child, and go 
to the school of love. Learn to love and to do 
good, that is the science of life. 

“ Remember the legend of Christophorus. He 
was a terrible giant but as he did not know how 
to use his strength, he was as weak as a child. 
He therefore required a guardian, and he placed 
himself in the service of a king; but the king was 
ill, and Christophorus left him. He sought for 
him who could make kings suffer; and as he knew 
not God, he first attached himself to the genius of 
evil. But one day a cross appeared upon a rock 
and the genius of evil fell as if struck by lightning. 
Then Christophorus sought for him of whom the 
cross is the sign, and an old man told him that he 


134 THE last incarnation 

would find him by doing good. Christophorus 
knew not how to pray or to work, but he was 
strong and very tall, and he carried on his shoul- 
ders the wandering travelers who wished to cross 
the torrent. Now, one evening he carried a little 
child under whom he bent as if he was carrying 
the world, for in the person of the poor wandering 
orphan he recognized the great God whom he 
sought. 

“ Do you understand this parable?” 

“ Yes, Lord,” said the philosopher, who was 
now a Christian. 

“Well, go and do as did Christophorus; carry 
the Christ when he faints with fatigue, or when 
the torrents of the world obstruct his passage. 
Suffering humanity shall be the Christ for you. 
Be the eye of the poor man, the arm of the weak, 
and the staff of the old man; and God will tell you 
the great wherefore of the human race.” 

“ I will do it, Lord; and I feel that henceforth 
I shall not be alone in the world. To which of 
my brothers shall I first extend my hand? ” 

“ To him who is more unhappy than you, and 
who, unknown to you, is expiring in the little cham- 
ber next to yours. Go then to his assistance, speak 
to him in order that he may hope, love him that 
he may believe, make yourself loved by him that 
he may live.” 


DISCOURAGED PHILOSOPHER 135 

“ Lead me to him, Lord, and speak to him for 
me. 

“ Come and see,” said the Savior; and he lightly 
touched the wall which opened in the midst like 
a double curtain, and the philosopher was trans- 
ported in the spirit to the chamber next his own. 
It was that of a young poet who was about dying 
deserted. 


FIFTEENTH LEGEND 


THE DYING POET 

A T that time there was a young man who 
early in life had heard in his soul the 
echo of universal harmonies. Now, 
that eternal music had distracted his 
attention from all things of mortal life, because 
he lived in a society which was still without har- 
mony. 

While a child, he was the butt of other children, 
who took him for an idiot; when a young man, he 
hardly found a hand to clasp his hand, a heart on 
which to rest his heart. 

His days passed in a long silence and in a pro- 
found revery ; he looked with strange ecstasy upon 
the sky, the water, the trees, the verdant fields; 
then his eyes became fixed, internal glories were 
displayed in his mind, and surpassed the glories of 
nature. Then tears flowed unwittingly down his 
cheeks, pale with emotion, and, if any one spoke 
to him, he did not hear. Therefore he was sel- 
dom spoken to, and was quite generally looked 
upon as crazy. 

He thus lived alone with God and with nature, 
137 


138 THE LAST INCARNATION 

speaking to God in the language of harmony, and 
letting fall upon the earth songs to which no one 
listened. 

But the material necessities of life at last seized 
him in their inextricable net; he awoke upon the 
earth, still dazzled by his visions of heaven; and 
when he wished to walk, he stumbled against men 
and against things, until he fell panting and de- 
spairing. 

It was then that he shut himself up in his poor 
abode, and there awaited death. 

It was then that the Christ looked upon him and 
had compassion on him. 

The poet’s chamber was gloomy, bare and cold; 
he was only half covered by a few worn-out gar- 
ments; stretched upon a sad bed of straw, he was 
restless with fever, and his eyes glistened with a 
dark fire. 

The Christ appeared to him clothed in a white 
robe, an emblem of madness which he had re- 
ceived from Herod, and his brow was crowned 
at the same time with the bloody thorns, and with 
an aureole of glory. 

“ Brother,” said he to the poor sick man, look- 
ing upon him with an ineffable love, “ why do you 
wish to die? ” 

“ Because one can no longer live upon the earth 
after having seen heaven,” sighed the poet. 

“ And I, in order to live and suffer upon the 


THE DYING POET 


i39 


earth, have nevertheless descended from heaven,” 
returned Jesus. 

“ You are the Son of God and you are strong.” 

“ And I wished to be the son of man, in order to 
hunger, to fear and to weep. Did I not faint in 
the garden of Olives? Did I not groan upon the 
cross as if God had forsaken me?” 

“ Well,” said the sick man, “ I go forth from 
life as you went forth from the garden of Olives, 
and I am upon my bed of pain as you were upon 
the cross.” 

“ If I had done nothing but pray to my father 
in the valleys while I breathed the perfume of the 
roses of Sharon, if I had silently intoxicated myself 
with the ecstasies of Mount Tabor, I should not 
have deserved to ransom the world upon the 
cross,” replied the Savior. “ But I sought for 
the sheep that had strayed, and in order to stop 
my feet which ran without ceasing after the 
miseries of the people, it was necessary that they 
should be nailed by the executioners. It was nec- 
essary to pierce my hands in order to prevent them 
from breaking bread for the famished multitudes; 
and then, when I had nothing more to give to my 
brothers, I allowed all my blood to flow.” 

“ I have sung,” said the poet, “ and men have 
not listened to me.” 

“ That is because you sang for yourself alone, 
and because you too much disdained their disdain. 


140 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


You should, after the example of the eternal word, 
have descended sufficiently to make yourself un- 
derstood.” 

“ Perhaps, instead of forgetting me, they would 
then have crucified me.” 

“ And then only, O my brother, would it have 
been beautiful to die in order to rise again glori- 
ous ! ” 

“ Master, instead of consoling me in my last 
hour, do you come to terrify and to reproach 
me?” 

“ I come to cure you and to inspire you with 
courage to live, in order to enable you to deserve 
a quiet death and one full of immortality. 

“ Why do you wish to live only in heaven dur- 
ing the days which God gives you to pass upon the 
earth? Why do you permit the immense love of 
your heart to be lost in vague aspirations? Why 
do you isolate yourself in the pride of your 
dreams, while real sorrows bleed and palpitate 
about you? 

“ God did not give you the celestial balm for the 
purpose of perfuming your head; he did not in- 
trust to you the wine of his chalice in order that 
you might intoxicate your mouth and disgust it 
with the bitter things of earth. You ought to 
soothe, to elevate, to console; you ought to be 
the physician of souls, and now you yourself, be- 


THE DYING POET 


141 

cause you have concealed the remedies of God, 
are more ill than the others. 

“ Men have not understood you, you say; but 
it is you, poor young man, who have not under- 
stood your brothers. 

“ What ! your intellect was superior, and you did 
not know how to speak to the poor in spirit! 
You thought yourself great, and you were afraid 
to lower yourself in order to bring your mouth 
near to the ear of those who were small! You 
loved, and you were disgusted by the infirmities 
of men! 

“ Rise up, poor fallen angel, and again begin 
your mission ! Know that the spirit of harmony 
is the spirit of love which I announced to the 
world under the name of the consoler. If it is 
the Holy Ghost which animates you, be hence- 
forth the consoler of your brothers, and in order 
to have the right and the power to console them, 
learn to suffer and to work with them. 

“ I was greater than you, and more than you I 
raised my soul to the bosom of the eternal har- 
monies; and yet I passed my life working with 
the carpenters and conversing with the poor, en- 
lightening their minds, moving their hearts and 
curing their diseases. Until now you have made 
poetry only in dreams and in words, but the time 
has come to make poetry in actions! For every- 


142 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


thing that is done from love of humanity, every- 
thing that is devotedness, sacrifice, patience, cour- 
age and perseverance, everything of this nature 
is sublime with harmony, is the poetry of martyrs. 

“ Instead of vaguely loving the infinite, try to 
love infinitely your brothers who are near to you. 
Here is one whom I bring to you; he suffered like 
you, and he had arrived at extinction of thought 
because he had isolated the labor of his mind, as 
you had arrived at despair of heart, because you 
had isolated your love. Henceforth you will both 
know that it is not good for man to be alone/’ 

The philosopher who had become a Christian 
then approached the bed of the sick man, whose 
fever had been suddenly calmed by the gentle 
and severe words of Jesus, and said to him: 
“ Brother, accept my cares and half of the bread 
which remains to me; to-morrow we will work 
together, and when I shall be ill in my turn, you 
will take care of me and you will have bread 
for me. 

“ Brother, because you have seen heaven, do 
not break the ladder which will enable you to 
ascend thither, but rather take me by the hand 
and lead me, for I have thought much and medi- 
tated much, and I now feel that I have not loved 
enough. 

“ You, whose voice is the living echo of eternal 
harmony, you are a child of celestial love, for 


THE DYING POET 


i43 


from the abundance of the heart the mouth speak- 
eth. But love could not become selfish without 
killing itself, and it can find fullness of life only 
by giving itself wholly to others. 

“ Live, therefore, in order that I may love you, 
for if I love I shall be happy; and if you love God, 
you desire the happiness of those who are the 
children of God like yourself. Harmony is at 
once science and poetry, mathematical exactness 
is the great law of beauty, and the harmonic 
glories are the divine reason of numbers; but all 
this, to be living and real, must be applied to 
what is. 

“ Brother, the positive of God is a thousand 
fold more poetical than the ideal of man. Let us 
seek God in humanity, and let us not despair of 
its destinies; for its very disorders lead it to har- 
mony, and if God has counted us in the number 
of those who first see whither this wandering peo- 
ple must go through the desert, let us place our- 
selves at the head of this great and laborious 
movement, instead of isolating ourselves and 
dying.” 

“ Brother, thanks to you,” said the poet, “ and 
thanks to heaven which inspires you ! henceforth I 
will no longer withdraw from the field of battle 
in order to die alone, while I can still fight; I 
should esteem myself a coward and a deserter. 
If I fall with arms in hand in the first or second 


144 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


rank of the humanitary militia, I shall die full of 
courage and blessing God, and my soul will not 
present itself alone before the supreme judge.” 

From that day, the philosopher and the poet 
were united in a holy friendship, and sometimes 
they did not disdain the most humble labors to 
support their life. 

Thus they went through all classes of society 
and everywhere found diseased hearts which 
awaited the balm of a word of wisdom and of 
love. Everywhere they felt that they could still 
do good; and the sufferings of life seemed light 
to them; for they bore them with courage, in or- 
der to inspire with courage those who suffered like 
themselves, and devotedness gave them new 
strength. 


SIXTEENTH LEGEND 


THE NEW NICODEMUS 


T HERE was at that time a priest who 
loved the truth, and who sought for good 
in all the sincerity of his heart. 

Now, one night when he was watch- 
ing and praying, the Christ came and seated him- 
self by his side and looked upon him with good- 


“ Master, is it you at last?” said the pastor. 
“ I have sought you for a long time, and now 
you come to me during the night! ” 

Jesus answered him: “Nicodemus came to 
see me during the night, because he was afraid of 
the Jews; I know that your existence depends 
upon the new synagogue, and I do not wish to 
compromise you. For the scribes and the phar- 
isees and the false doctors of the law still perse- 
cute me and persecute those who receive me.” 

“ Lord,” said the priest with sadness, “ the 
glorious years of which the beautiful ages of the 
church are composed have then been fruitless for 
the future ! Does truth then always escape from 
the ardent aspirations of men? The saints and 
martyrs were then deceived, since eighteen cen- 
145 


146 the last incarnation 

turies of combats and of study have only made 
enemies to you of those who ought to be your 
ministers.” 

Jesus said to him: “They are not all my 
enemies, and my father still reckons among them 
generous souls and pure hearts. I shall go to 
them as I have come to you, in order to recall to 
them the signs of the times and to open their eyes 
so that they may see. 

“ I still come in secret to explain to you what I 
taught in secret to that doctor of the ancient law, 
who was also a man of good will. 

“ I told him that the entrance to the kingdom 
of God was a new birth. The life of the world 
is an incessantly renewed generation, and it is nec- 
essary that the germs of the year which dies should 
be deposited in the earth in order to prepare the 
riches of the year which shall be born. But new 
wine must not be put into old bottles. 

“ My father’s vine is never sterile, and from 
year to year it renews its fruits; but he calls the 
vinedressers at different hours of the day. This 
is why I called the faithful doctors of the ancient 
law to a new birth, for their old mother, the Jew- 
ish synagogue, was dying, and in order to be born 
it was necessary to leave her bosom. And those 
who believed left the dead body of the synagogue 
while they remained united to its soul, and they 
were the first children of the universal Church. 


THE NEW NICODEMUS 


i47 


“ But the universal Church was a new heaven 
and a new earth; and in order to renew all things 
it was first necessary to fight against all the powers 
of heaven and of earth. This is why the first 
Christians built an ark to struggle against the un- 
chaining of the winds and the rising of the waters. 
That ark was the hierarchical Church, the holy 
Catholic Church, the guardian of the symbol of 
unity. 

“ So long as the ark is borne by the waters, it 
moves under the breath of God, and in its bosom 
every living soul seeks a refuge; but, as soon as 
it stops, the new family must come out from it in 
order to repeople the earth, and this is the new 
birth of which I have spoken to you.” 

The priest said to him: “ Lord, must I leave 
the Catholic Church? But to what other church 
could I unite myself? ” 

“ I do not tell you to leave the Catholic 
Church,” returned Jesus, “ but I invite you to en- 
ter into it. I tell you to free yourself from 
shadows in order to begin to live in the light. I 
tell you to leave the school in order to enter into 
society and to apply to it the science which you 
must have acquired! 

“ I did not come to destroy the ancient law, but 
to give to it its accomplishment, and I now come 
to accomplish the new law. 

“ Have I not said: 1 Believe first and you will 


148 the last incarnation 

understand afterwards, and you shall know the 
truth, and the truth will make you free ? ’ 

“ Have I not said that my second coming would 
be as the light which strikes the eyes of all, and 
which shines at once upon the whole world? 

“ Have I not announced that the spirit of in- 
telligence would come and that it would suggest 
to my disciples the complement of my words? 
And do not your symbols say that the spirit of in- 
telligence is the spirit of love which must produce a 
new creation and make young again the face of the 
earth? Now, is not the spirit of love that spirit 
of order and of harmony which must associate all 
men, and make them all commune in divine and 
human unity? 

“ Come out then from all the bonds which 
prevent brothers from advancing toward their 
brothers, overthrow the barriers which separate, 
enlarge the abodes which are isolated, escape from 
the doctrines which reprove some and elect others, 
leave the blinded synagogue, enter into the 
Catholic Church, which is now no longer a con- 
venticle of priests and of doctors, but the uni- 
versal association of all men of intelligence and 
love.” 

“ Lord,” said the priest, “ I will do all that 
you say. Whither shall I first go and where shall 
I begin?” 

“ Remain where you are,” said Jesus, “ and do 


THE NEW NICODEMUS 


149 


what you have to do. Teach children, catechize 
the poor, visit the sick and pray for the people. 
Let nothing be changed in your works, but 
let a universal love vivify them and make them 
fruitful. 

“ Preach mercy and peace, preach modesty and 
the forgiveness of injuries, preach holy aspira- 
tions toward God and union among brothers. 
Let charity be the law of your soul, and you will 
not impose upon the souls of others constraints 
which drive them to despair. Be gentle and hum- 
ble of heart as were my first disciples, when you 
speak to women, to children and to the poor peo- 
ple ; but be as inflexible as were my martyrs, when 
any one attempts to corrupt or to intimidate you. 

“ What I say to you, I say for all those who, 
like you, shall believe in the spirit of intelligence 
and love; and this is w T hy I address my words to 
many. 

“ Do not confound the spirit of abstinence with 
the spirit of death; for I ordered my disciples to 
abstain for awhile from the riches of their father, 
only that they might learn to use those riches 
worthily. 

“ I tell you in truth that I have not come to kill 
the flesh, but to save it by subjecting it to the spirit. 
For there should be no division between the spirit 
and the flesh of man; God has created and blessed 
them equally. 


150 THE LAST INCARNATION 

“ The spirit is the king of the flesh; a king must 
not reign in order to destroy. 

“ The organs and the senses are the subjects 
of the intellect; a king should prevent his subjects 
from doing evil, but he should also provide for 
their prosperity and happiness. 

“ Is not attraction then the general law of 
beings, and is not equilibrium the harmony of 
attractions? 

“ Let not the spirit then break the flesh, and let 
not the flesh extinguish the spirit. For either of 
these excesses would be death! 

“ Now, I have not come to kill those who lived, 
I have come to restore health to those who were 
sick and life to those who were dead ! ” 

Having said all these things, Jesus disappeared 
from the eyes of the good priest, and left him full 
of hope and of courage; for he saw the power of 
God supply from age to age the shortcomings of 
men, and he understood how religion advances 
always through the ages, growing and triumphing 
always. 


SEVENTEENTH LEGEND 


THE TOMB OF SAINT JOHN 

A T that time Jesus traversed with the 
rapidity of the spirit all the countries of 
the earth. All were sad and expectant. 
•And everywhere the Christ was still 
alone, as in the garden of Olives. 

He entered as a poor pilgrim, into the basilica 
of Saint Peter, where no one recognized him; he 
approached the tomb of his apostles, in order to 
see if their relics were ready for resurrection; but 
the ashes of the saints were cold, and they con- 
tinued to sleep their sleep. 

Now, there is one of those apostles who, ac- 
cording to the tradition, was never to die; he 
whom the symbolic painting represents to us as 
always young, and who has an eagle for emblem; 
it is the one who is called the apostle of charity 
and the disciple of love. 

It is this one, say the legends of earlier times, 
who is to awake at the end of the ages, in order 
to save the world, by rekindling the holy fire of 
fraternal charity; and, in fact, say those same 
legends, his remains were never found; the faith- 
ful of Ephesus thought to bury him, and retain 


152 


THE LAST INCARNATION 


him among them, but the angels came and hid the 
sleeping apostle in the solitudes of Patmos. 

Jesus therefore transported himself into the 
island of Patmos, which seemed still terrified by 
the noise of the seven thunders, and he ap- 
proached the grotto where slept his faithful dis- 
ciple. At the entrance of the tomb, a celestial 
form was seated motionless; it was like a woman, 
clothed in a long azure mantle, which covered her 
head, and enveloped her entirely, falling around 
her in large folds. 

Her pale and somewhat elongated hands were 
clasped with fervor; and her eyes, full of a re- 
signed sadness and an infinite hope, were fixed 
upon the tomb. 

Jesus approached her, and said: “My 
mother, is it you? You doubtless knew that I 
would come here? ” 

“ I did know it, my son,” replied Mary; “ for 
you tenderly loved him who rests here; and when 
you were about to die, you confided me to him, 
saying unto him : ‘ Behold your mother ! ’ 

“ Now, in order that I may be able to return 
upon the earth in the person of the women who 
shall understand what it is to be mothers, it is 
necessary that the disciple of love should revive 
in order to protect me. For in the person of all 
women of intelligence and love, I must bring you 
into the world a second time, O my son! ” 


THE TOMB OF SAINT JOHN 153 

“ Mother,” returned Jesus, “ do you remember 
what the angel said to the women who sought me 
in the sepulcher? ‘ Why do you seek the living 
among the dead? He has risen, he is no longer 
here.’ 

“ You know that the prophet Elias, according to 
the traditions of the Jews, was to return upon the 
earth, in order to prepare the way for me. The 
form of Elias was transfigured, and his spirit re- 
turned in the person of John the Baptist. 

“ Thus, I tell you in truth that you live now 
upon the earth in the person of all women who 
feel the hope of the future thrill in their bosom. 
This is why, my mother, you this day appear for 
the last time under your symbolic figure. 

“ John, my beloved disciple, bequeathed his 
spirit to all the men full of faith and love, who 
wish to build the new Jerusalem, the holy city of 
harmony, and I tell you in truth that those men 
know how to honor their mother, and that they 
are worthy to be called the sons of the woman. 

“ For they submit their heart to the inspirations 
of your heart, those who wish to divide labor 
among all the children of the great family accord- 
ing to the attractions and the fitness of each, in 
order that all together may produce the honey 
of the human hive, which shall afterwards serve 
for the nourishment of all. 

“ They know what woman is, those who wish 


i 5 4 THE LAST INCARNATION 

to emancipate her love from all servitude, in or- 
der that it may never be prostituted, and that the 
source of the generations may be pure. 

“ Rise up, therefore, and come with me, my 
mother; come upon Calvary, to be present at my 
last symbolic triumph; then we will live again in 
the whole of humanity. All the women will be 
you, and all the men will be me, and we two will 
make but one.” 

And the Christ, raising his mother and carry- 
ing her in his arms, as she had so often carried 
him when he was a little child, left the island of 
Patmos, and, walking upon the waves of the sea, 
went toward the shores of Palestine. 

At this moment the sun rose, and made the 
whole surface of the waters glisten, and the two 
celestial forms glided along without casting any 
shadow, and without leaving any trace, like a 
pair of fabulous birds, or like a light cloud, tinged 
with the colors of the dawn, and shaded with the 
reflections of the rainbow. 


EIGHTEENTH LEGEND 


THE FAREWELL TO CALVARY 

J ESUS crossed the desolate fields of Judea 
and stopped upon the arid summit of ancient 
Calvary. 

There an angel with black brows and 
gloomy eye was seated, enveloped in his two vast 
wings. It was Satan, the king of the old world. 

The rebellious angel was sad and fatigued, and 
he turned away his looks with disgust from an 
earth in which evil was without genius, and in 
which the ennui of a timid corruption had taken 
the place of the Titanian combats of the great 
ancient passions. He felt that in trying men he 
had taught the strong and deceived only the weak; 
therefore he no longer deigned to tempt any one, 
and gloomy under his diadem of gold, he vaguely 
listened to the fall of souls into eternity, as to 
the monotonous drops of an eternal rain. 

Impelled by a force which was unknown to him, 
he had come and seated himself upon Calvary, 
and thinking of the death of the Man-God, he was 
jealous of him. 

He was a powerful and beautiful angel; but he 
was jealous of the Christ, and that jealousy was 
155 


1 56 THE LAST INCARNATION 

symbolized by a serpent which buried its head in 
his bosom and gnawed his heart. 

Jesus and Mary stood before him and looked 
upon him in silence with great pity. Satan in his 
turn looked upon the Redeemer and smiled with 
bitterness. 

“ Have you come,” said he to him, “ to try 
and die a second time for a world which you could 
not save by your first execution ? Have you tried 
in vain to change stones into bread to feed your 
people, and do you come to confess to me your 
defeat? Have you fallen from the pinnacle of 
the temple, and has your divinity been broken by 
its fall? 

“ Do you come to adore me, in order that you 
may possess the world? Go! it is too late now, 
and I could not deceive you. The empire of the 
world has departed from those who adored me 
in your name; and I myself am tired of reigning 
without glory. If you are discouraged like me, 
take your seat by my side, and let us think no 
longer of God or of man.” 

“ I do not come to take a seat by your side,” 
said the Christ, “ I come to raise you, to forgive 
you and to console you, in order that you may 
cease to be wicked.” 

“ I want none of your forgiveness,” replied the 
bad angel, “ and it is not I who am wicked. 

“ The wicked one is he who gives to spirits a 


THE FAREWELL TO CALVARY 157 

thirst for intelligence, and who envelopes the 
truth in an impenetrable mystery. It is he who 
allows to their love the glimpse of an ideal virgin, 
of a beauty so intoxicating as to cast them into 
delirium, and who gives her to them only to tear 
her at once from their first embraces, and to load 
her with eternal chains. It is he in fine who has 
given liberty to the angels, and who has prepared 
infinite punishments for those who did not wish 
to be his slaves. 

“ The wicked one is he who has killed his in- 
nocent son under the pretext of avenging upon 
him the crimes of the guilty, and who has not par- 
doned the guilty, but has made the death of his 
son an additional crime on their part.” 

“ Why recall to me so bitterly the ignorance 
and the errors of men?” returned Jesus. “I 
know better than you do how much they have dis- 
figured the image of God, and you yourself know 
very well that God does not resemble the image 
they have made of him. 

“ God gave you a thirst for intelligence only 
to quench it forever with the waters of eternal 
truth. But why close your eyes and seek for 
daylight in yourself instead of looking at the sun? 
If you sought the light where it is, you would find 
it, for in God there are neither shadows nor 
mysteries; the shadows are in yourself, and the 
mysteries are the weaknesses of your spirit. 


158 the last incarnation 

“ God did not give liberty to his creatures in 
order to take her from them again, but he gives 
her to them as a wife, and not as an illegitimate 
mistress; he desires that they should possess her 
and not commit violence on her, for that chaste 
daughter of heaven cannot survive an outrage, 
and when her virgin dignity is wounded, liberty 
is dead to him who has misunderstood her. 

“ God does not desire slaves; it is revolted pride 
which has created servitude. The law of God is 
the royal right of his creatures; it is the title of 
their everlasting liberty. 

“ God did not kill his son, but the son of God 
voluntarily gave his life in order to kill death; 
and this is why he now lives in the whole of hu- 
manity, and will save all the generations, for from 
trial to trial he leads the human family into the 
promised land, and they have already tasted its 
first fruits. I therefore come to announce to 
you, O Satan, that your last hour has arrived, un- 
less you wish to be free and to reign with me over 
the world, by intelligence and love. 

“ But you shall no longer be called Satan, you 
shall resume the glorious name of Lucifer, and I 
will place a star on your brow and a torch in your 
hand. You shall be the genius of labor and of 
industry, because you have greatly striven, greatly 
suffered, and sadly thought! 


THE FAREWELL TO CALVARY 159 

“ You shall stretch your wings from one pole to 
the other, and you shall hover over the world; 
glory shall reawaken at your voice. Instead of 
being the pride of isolation, you shall be the sub- 
lime pride of devotedness, and I will give to you 
the scepter of earth and the key of heaven.” 

“ I do not understand you,” said the demon, 
sadly shaking his head, “ and I am not able to 
understand you. You know well that I can no 
longer love ! ” And with a sorrowful gesture the 
fallen angel showed to the Christ the wound that 
furrowed his chest and the serpent that gnawed 
his heart. 

Jesus turned toward his mother, and looked 
upon her. Mary understood the eyes of her son; 
she approached the unhappy angel, and did not 
disdain to stretch forth her hand to him, and to 
touch his wounded breast. Then the serpent fell 
of itself and expired at the feet of Mary, who 
crushed its head; the wound of the angel’s heart 
was healed, and a tear, the first he had shed, 
slowly descended upon the repentant countenance 
of Lucifer. That tear was precious as the blood 
of a God; and by it were ransomed all the blas- 
phemies of hell. 

The regenerated angel prostrated himself upon 
Calvary, and weeping, kissed the place where the 
cross had formerly stood. 


160 THE LAST INCARNATION 


Then he rose, triumphing with hope and radi- 
ant with love, and threw himself into the arms of 
the Christ. 

Then Calvary trembled; its arid summit was 
suddenly clothed with a fresh and brilliant ver- 
dure, and was crowned with flowers. 

At the spot where the cross had stood, a young 
vine grew and was loaded with ripe and perfumed 
fruit. 

The Savior then said: “This is the vine 
which shall give the wine of universal communion, 
and it shall grow until all its branches shall em- 
brace the whole earth.” 

Then taking his mother by the hand, he ex- 
tended the other to the angel of liberty, and said: 
“ Let our symbolical forms now return to heaven; 
I shall not again come back to suffer death upon 
this mountain, Mary will no longer weep here 
for her son, and Lucifer will no longer drag here 
the remorse of his now effaced crime. 

“We are now but one spirit; the spirit of in- 
telligence and of love, the spirit of liberty and of 
courage, the spirit of life which has triumphed 
over death.” 

Then all three took their flight through space; 
and rising to a prodigious height, they saw the 
earth and all its kingdoms stretching their roads 
towards each other like arms intertwined; they 
iaw the fields already green with the first fraternal 


THE FAREWELL TO CALVARY 161 


crops, and from East to West they heard the mys- 
terious prelude of the chant of union. And to- 
wards the North, upon the crest of a bluish moun- 
tain, they saw portrayed the gigantic figure of a 
man who raised his arms toward heaven. Upon 
his arms could still be seen the recent marks of the 
chains he had just broken, and his chest was 
scarred like that of Lucifer. Under his right 
foot, upon the sharpest peak of the mountain, still 
palpitated the body of a vulture, the head and 
wings of which hung down. 

That mountain was the Caucasus; and the de- 
livered giant who stretched forth his hands was 
the ancient Prometheus. 

Thus the great divine and human symbols met 
and saluted each other under the same heaven; 
then they disappeared to give place to God him- 
self, who came to dwell forever with men. 






















NINETEENTH LEGEND 


THE LAST VISION 

A BOVE material forms of the terrestial 
atmosphere there is a region whither 
souls rush when freed from their 
chains. 

It is there that the ethereal aromas, obe- 
dient to the thought, clothe it in succession with 
all the splendors of the ideal form, and peo- 
ple with marvelous beauties the spiritual world 
of poetry and of visions. 

It is into this region that our most beautiful 
dreams transport us during our sleep, and it is 
hither that, during their laborious watchings, in- 
spiration elevated the genius of the great poets, 
to whom the feeling of harmony has, in all ages, 
given a foresight of the great destinies of hu- 
manity. It is here that images live and analogies 
reign. For poetry is in the images; and the har- 
mony of images is essentially analogical. 

It was in this ideal region that Eschylus saw 
Prometheus suffer, and that Moses heard the 
words of Jehovah. It was here that the greatest 
poet of the East, the eagle of Patmos, and singer 

163 


1 64 THE LAST INCARNATION 

of the Apocalypse, saw the Christian Church under 
the form of a woman in labor who was painfully 
bringing forth the man of the future. It was in 
this marvelous world of poetry and of visions that 
God appeared to him veiled in light and holding 
in his hand the eternal gospel, which slowly 
opened while the plagues scourged the world, 
and the destroying angels cleared the earth in or- 
der to make place for the city of holy unity and of 
harmony, the New Jerusalem, which descended 
from heaven already built, because the idea of 
harmony exists in God, and will be realized of it- 
self upon the earth when men shall understand it. 

The glorious figure of the Christ, after having 
traversed the earth, reascended into that ethereal 
region, and there the Redeemer showed to the 
formerly rebellious, and henceforth regenerate 
angel, the great assembly of the martyrs. 

There were united all the victims of human 
despotism, all those who had preferred to die 
rather than to lie to their conscience. The vic- 
tims of Antiochus, the martyrs of ancient Rome, 
and those executed by modern Rome. 

Some for legitimate beliefs, others for illusions 
and dreams, they had courageously braved the 
tyranny of men, and all were pure before God; 
for they had suffered in order to preserve the 
noblest and the most beautiful of his gifts: lib- 
erty. 


THE LAST VISION 165 

Long had their souls, clothed in white robes 
spotted with blood, groaned under the altar and 
cried for justice; but at last, the day had come, and 
all together, bearing palms in their hands, they 
advanced to meet the Redeemer. 

The Christ appeared in the midst of them, be- 
tween his mother and the angel of repentance, and 
asked them what vengeance they wished to take 
on their persecutors. 

“ Lord, let their souls be given to us, in order 
that we may dispose of them for eternity, as they 
disposed of us in time.” 

The Christ then gave to them the keys of 
heaven and of hell, and said to them: “The 
souls of your persecutors are yours.” 

Then a cry of joy and triumph resounded from 
the heights of heaven even to the depths of the 
abyss; the souls of the martyrs open the gates 
of hell and extend the hand to their executioners. 
Every reprobate finds one of the elect for a pro- 
tector; heaven enlarges its circumference, and the 
virgin mother weeps with joy at seeing crowd 
around her so many children whom she had 
thought forever lost. 

While the whole of heaven smiled at this mag- 
nificent spectacle, a new sun was seen to rise upon 
the earth, and night drew back her veil towards 
the west. The dark clouds of the past fled laden 
with phantoms, which were the shadows of the 


1 66 THE LAST INCARNATION 


great extinct monarchies and of old vanished be- 
liefs. 

Between the night and the rising dawn, the 
twilight whitened the head of an old man who 
was seated with his face turned towards the east. 
It was the traveler of Christian centuries, the out- 
cast of barbarous civilization, the type of the 
pariahs, the old Ahasuerus who was resting him- 
self. The people had at last a country, and the 
Wandering Jew had obtained his pardon. 

The earth had become the temple of God. 
Universal association had realized Christian 
charity. All lived and labored for each, and each 
for all. Each enjoyed in peace the fruit of his 
labors, and no one of the children of God per- 
ished with hunger near the table of his father, 
for equitably recompensed labor made life easy 
for all. 

Association had increased a hundred fold the 
riches of the earth, and union of all interests 
had given to the labors of man a direction so di- 
vine and a power so marvelous, that the seasons 
themselves had changed, and there was, accord- 
ing to the promise of the apostle, a new heaven 
and a new earth; and Jesus said to the angel of 
liberty and of genius: “ This is the work which 
you must accomplish. This is the new city of in- 
telligence and of love. The earth is ready, it 
thrills with hope. Men see it now as it was for- 


THE LAST VISION 


167 


merly seen by the prophet, covered with ashes and 
with bones; but a new life already stirs under 
those ashes, and a divine impulse is working in 
those dry bones. Soon they will rise at the call 
of the new spirit, and a new people will cover the 
fields of earth. Humanity will then wake out of 
a long sleep, and it will appear to it that it sees 
daylight for the first time ! ” 

Having uttered these words, the Christ pros* 
trated himself before the throne of his Father, 
saying: “Lord, may thy will be done on earth 
as it is done in heaven! ” 

And the virgin, who is the type of regenerated 
woman; and the angel of liberty, who had be- 
come the genius of order and of harmony; and 
all the martyrs, who were consoled; and all the 
reprobates, who were penitent and were freed 
from their sufferings, — answered all together that 
mysterious word which unites the will of the crea- 
ture to that of the Creator, and all human forces 
to the divine power: Amen! 


















/ 












EPILOGUE 


W E have now to offer these legends to 
all our brothers who labor with us 
upon the social edifice. We hope 
they will assist the intelligent and seri- 
ous men of the people to understand the sym- 
bolism of the Gospel, that always true book, 
which contains so much depth in the simplicity of 
its teachings and in the artless poetry of its para- 
bles. We have not had the intention of writing 
a new gospel, but we have endeavored to apply 
to the diseases of modern society the always pow- 
erful virtue of the ancient gospel spirit, by mak- 
ing the Christ speak as we think he would speak, 
should he again come among us. 

Each can supply the insufficiency of these 
legends. The perfect man may be represented 
as struggling with all human imperfections, and 
it is in this sense that St. John the Evangelist says, 
at the end of his mystic recital: “ If all the ac- 
tions and all the words of the Christ were written 
in detail, the whole world, I think, would not 
contain the books that should be written.” 

We have entitled this work “ The Last In- 
carnation,” because we herein seek to explain 

169 


1 7 o THE LAST INCARNATION 

how the divine Word, after having been in- 
carnated in a man who is the head and the model 
of humanity, must at least be incarnated in the 
whole of humanity by the communion of all to 
the intelligence of one same spirit, and to the 
fraternity of one same love. 

May we have succeeded in our efforts to com- 
municate our faith to those who doubt, and our 
hope to those who are discouraged! for, at this 
period, when all seems to be perishing, we have 
the certainty of being present at the revival of the 
world. 

Already socialism is no longer a system; it is 
the universal religion of all active intelligences and 
of all young and living hearts. 

Christianity is at last about to realize its prom- 
ises; and philosophy, arriving at unity by means 
of synthesis, is becoming essentially religious. 
Reason is also about to be reconciled forever with 
Faith. 

The time of superstitions has passed away. 
Men can no longer be amused by mysterious 
images, no longer can they be made to tremble by 
inexplicable enigmas. 

God has given to us the intellect in order that 
we may understand, and the heart in order that we 
may love: and by the feelings he gives to our 
heart of his harmonies, he raises our spirit even 
to himself. 


EPILOGUE 


171 

God being supreme wisdom, has created every- 
thing for an end, and has given to all his creatures 
the means of attaining the end which he assigns 
to them. He preserves harmony among the stars 
by the laws of attraction, and it is by the same laws 
that he has regulated beforehand the destinies of 
men. 

The attractions are therefore proportional to 
the destinies . 

Now, the different attractions all have har- 
monic unity for their end, but they must cause all 
wills to act in different circles magnificently co- 
ordained among themselves. An immense chain 
of harmony connects with God all his works, and 
from series to series he distributes life to all be- 
ings. 

The series distributes the harmonies. 

Analogical relations exist between the series, 
and are as the steps of the ladder of science, of 
that ladder of gold which the prophet formerly 
saw during his sleep, and which assisted the spirits 
to ascend from earth to heaven, and to descend 
from heaven to earth. 

These are the bases of the new science; they 
are founded upon all philosophical and religious 
traditions; and we can say that they are not the 
principles of a school, but the theorems of the 
most advanced science, and the incontestable dog- 
mas of true universal religion. 








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